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Last weekend my family went up to Boston to visit my younger sister who is currently a sophmore at BU. One of the cities many transportation systems is called the T (train/metro) and when riding the T I have determined that anything can happen. During this last visit a woman came on to the train that was clearly having some type of a mental issue. The minute she got on she threw her bag across the floor and it happened to land at my father's feet. She proceeded to cuss, rant and rave about absolutely nothing at all. She the began to harass a young Indian couple whose baby was fussing. She went as far as to say something along the lines of "shut that thing up before I cut its head off". When the train jolted the woman lost her balance grabbing onto the child's stroller for support. What amazed me during this whole thing is that everyone on the train was ignoring her. It was as though we were back in the Middle Ages and the best way to deal with people who were not mentally sound was to ignore them! I kept thinking that the government needs to be able to provide these people with the help they need because not only can they be a danger to themselves but also to others. This particular woman was in my opinion without shelter, food or medical care. If she were offered help though would she take it? Should she be forced to take it?

Another instance that comes to mind was a program on Oprah, actually this program was what totally turned me off Oraph. On this particular show Oprah focuses on homeless people and decides to leave 100,000 dollars for a homeless person to find. The money is found as planned and the young man who finds it begins to give it away and some of it he loses. Six months later the young many has absolutely nothing, the issues turns into one of mental health. The young man is invited on to Opraph's show where he begins to be interogated about his spending and he breaks down mid-episode and begins to cry, he clearly has no idea what is going on. This inability to recognize mental illness astonished me. Has our society reached such a point as we are no loger capable of not only helping but recognizing those that need it the most?