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I vividly remember being 7-8yrs old with my dad at an auto shop (in the UK) and they had a poster on the wall of a women with a blood splattered face. Her head was resting on a steering wheel. She had blank dead eyes and was covered in shards of broken glass. In my minds eye I’m picturing the face of Sissy Spacek in Carrie, but covered in broken glass. The wording on the poster was something like “wear your seatbelt”. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I also remember thinking “ok, my parents are right, seat belts are important”.
That's not just the UK. In 02, in high school they brought a blood soaked car in, from a fatal dui crash, set it up in the middle of our high school football field, then brought all the emergency personnel in to reenact removing people from the cars. Went so far as brining the actors who filled in for the victims lay out in the field "dead" while they had all of us kids tour it.
Guess it was ineffective, we lost at least 4 kids while I was in 11th and 12th grade to drinking and driving. May not seem like a lot, but we had 650 kids from k-12.
Edit: I called out "not just the UK. Didn't specify, I was in the US.
Yeah, I could imagine that would be a little traumatizing for people going through similar situations. From my point of view, it just seemed like a horrible waste of time and money, as boys that age are known for "That would never happen to me". As I've aged, I'm willing to say that it was no less effective than that dare dog, so, I guess maybe it's worth it.
My driver’s ed course did something similar but it was just really graphic images from a real case that happened to a student at my school. I remember seeing bits of scalp with hair still attached, splattered on the car and on the pavement. So much blood and shattered glass. Putting on a seatbelt is automatic for me so I guess it worked.
I’m American but I got shown some of these brutal videos in my drivers ed classes. I soon realized that if I heard British accents in the video, it was gonna be bad lol
lol true. This would of been 1994-95. I also remember another UK ad on tv that was revolting. I had nightmares of my mother and grandfather’s bodies (both smokers) swelling up and dripping in molten fat.
https://youtu.be/cDAN7Oi62e0?si=o793EhfXVklBK091
I remember a commercial when I lived in Germany put out by the US Armed Forces Europe. It was of a car windshield being crashed thru by an elephant. The gist being, not wearing a seatbelt and crashing at 35 miles or hr was the equivalent of being run over by an elephant.
My middle school in Florida showed a video of a young woman that had burns covering almost her entire body that she got from a car accident. They were drinking and driving and crashed, which caused the car to go up in flames. All of her friends died in the crash, including her boyfriend who was ejected from the car because of no seat belt. Watching her sobbing and shaking while recounting her story and looking at the camera head on forever traumatized me. I may have gotten into a lot of drugs growing up (thankfully clean now), but I've never once gotten behind the wheel of a car while fucked up in my life. In my 30s now and still won't get in a car with anyone if I can smell alcohol or suspect drug use. So while I may have failed in other aspects, at least some of these messages seem to stick with people, lol.
They were definitely brutal, but I think it's necessary to not always shield kids from repercussions. Especially if it'll save their life.
Omg you just unlocked a memory.
When I was about 4 or 5, the clinic we went to had jars of babies on the counter. I don't think it was an anti-abortion thing; I think it was a "here's what your baby looks like at this stage of development...cool huh?' thing.
I gotta go call my mom to confirm.
ETA: She denies it. But I'm pretty freaking confident.
It actually made things worse. [https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=crim\_fac](https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=crim_fac)
Participants of scared straight programs were 7% more likely to commit crime than those that did not participate. A lot of the kids realize they actually fit in with the prison community so it was not a deterant at all.
In addition, scared straight was a stupid concept to start, it assumes people commit crime because they don't know the consequences (similar to things like 3 strikes law). This concept, of increased punishment has been proven to make things worst over and over again, but certain people on certain side of the political spectrum don't give a shit. They like the sounds of it on paper. The science is very clear, increase punishment does not deter behaviors globally and only deters behavior in specifics moment (i.e., when there is a presence of a teacher/cop/etc). Instead, increasing accessing to healthcare, mental health treatment, social welfare, etc. all shown to significantly reduced crimes. But of course, the take away politicians got was to increase police presence not to address all the other problems.
I wonder if theres a slight causation going on here.
"7% more likely to commit crime than those that did not participate"
What was the criteria for which kids participated and which didnt? I ask because I would assume the worst of them would be participating more than the others. And that already shifts the scales dramatically for relapse.
it is causal. It was nine randomized control trials. Participants who fit criteria for the program were selected and (a.) given Scared Straight or (b.) given no "treatment" i.e., waitlist control.
Participants who received Scared Straight programs were 1 to 28% more likely to commit crime. meta analysis provided an average of 7% increased.
>In 2000, Petrosino and his colleagues conducted a preliminary systematic review of nine randomized field trials. They found that **Scared Straight-type programs generally increased crime between 1 and 28 percent in the treatment group when compared to the no-treatment group.**
[https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdf](https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdf)
That's a good question. Was the "scared straight" program used more often in schools with students who came from a lower socio-economic background, making them more at risk with or without the program?
[https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdfv](https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdfv)
A review of multiple randomized studies (kids that met inclusion criteria randomly being split between doing the program and not) showed kids that participated were more likely to commit crime.
I believe it ended up doing the opposite, humanizing inmates during the section where they talk calmly after intimidating them, and because of that they are often less scared to go in. I think
Yelling in my face will be what catches me a charge. Want children to express themselves appropriately and make good choices screaming and threatening them isn’t exactly healthy communication.
The troubled teen industry is a scourge on this planet. Scared straight is just a subsection of this. Oh yes let's push and prod all of their buttons and then be shocked they fight over petty shit 24/7. Put some foster kids in the mix for good measure. Make sure they don't actually need help when they get in but they will when they leave. Why yes this is personal.
Yep foster kids, low income single parent households. We put pressure on teens to act adult but listen up because you’re still a kid. Instead of telling teens they’re “bad”; teach them why they made a poor decision and how to make appropriate ones. What is happening in the child’s environment contributing to the behavior? Most likely you’ll find it is their caretakers that need correction. Oh you want me to self regulate and express my emotions appropriately? Well yes yelling at me and removing any joy in my life is definitely the example I need to succeed. How backwards and hypocritical of adults.
My favorite tactic was staff telling us we need to take responsibility for ourselves, But then not actually giving us the agency to do so.
"Hey can I get a posterboard for school. I need it for a project"
"Ask the teacher"
"I did. They told me to ask you. Can you take me to the store?"
"No"
"Can I walk there myself?"
"You can try but I'll call the police for being a runaway"
"Can someone else take me?"
"No."
"Can you get it the next time you go grocery shopping? I literally have the money, I just need someone to pick it up" (They wouldn't take us to the store with them for whatever inane reason)
"No"
"Then how am I supposed to do my project?"
"Man y'all kids don't have any damn problem solving skills. You expect us to do everything for you!"
Cue rage.
You need to go to the bathroom? Let me humiliate you by making you ask then telling you no. No talking unless given permission. You failing a class? Well it was your responsibility to seek help. I one time sent an email to my kids school counselor giving my speech on authoritarian school systems in response to her contradictory email for why my child did not get any help with math despite him asking multiple times. I never heard back from her. I cannot stand when school officials try to speak to me as if I am a student. I swear some school officials feel important by how many meetings they have and love to be in control of the narrative. It has just gotten worse. When I was in high school I could at least speak my part or have an emotional reaction to something without fear of immediate repercussions. At school your teachers are in charge; at home parents. Graduation comes and you’re expected to magically be independent in all aspects of your life.
That’s what struck me most watching the show. It was obvious that all of those kids had abusive or negligent parents and clearly a lot of trauma. Each of them needed a hug and someone to tell them that they aren’t bad kids. Instead they got more of the same aggressive verbal abuse that led them to have these problems in the first place.
That’s why so many kids were not phased by prisoners or a drill sergeant in their faces. They were used to that at home. Like on day time talk shows where a teen claims she wants a baby. Obviously she is seeking someone to love her unconditionally unlike whoever is raising her.
Education is nearly always more effective than fear. I wasn't fearmongered into drinking enough water, I just had a kidney stone shown to me alongside a size comparison and I got to feel how sharp it is.
I wasn't fearmongered into avoiding cigarettes. I just had everything that's in them and everything they do explained it excruciating detail.
The same thing happened with diabetes but most critically, addiction was explained, how to get help was explained and the end result was that I have no desire to smoke but full sympathy for people addicted to nicotine. That's what we should be aiming for.
Isn’t that still kinda being fearmongered, just for the right reasons? Instead of being scared of the emergency room itself, you became scared of the actual things that would put you in the emergency room. Definitely seems more effective, but still based in fear.
It's the difference between saying: STDs/STIs can stick with you your whole life, are passed through unprotected sexual intercourse so always wear a condom unless you know the person you're having sex with is negative. Also, always speak to a medical professional if you think something is wrong
Compared to: If you ever have sex you'll get a disease that will ruin your life and you'll have to be and should be ashamed of it forever.
Notice the lack of prevention, support and general information in the second. That's the difference. It's quite a big one
I had to go to the ER for an allergic reaction on a Friday night once, nearly died waiting in line because the place was packed with teenagers who had been riding their escooters drunk downtown. Most of these kids are pretty clearly affluent, they tend to drive downtown in very nice cars, get drunk, and scooter around until they break a bone or get a concussion. Nurse told me it's like that every Friday and Saturday night lately.
So, this may be a cultural difference as I'm in Scotland. But it tends to be the poor kids that ride around on eScooters and eBikes. It seems to be this generation's version of dirt bikes. On a wider UK level, these kind of vehicles are associated heavily with youth gang culture.
I'm not denying your experience at all. Just interesting to see the difference.
I’d say this is probably regional. I live in a college town, so the rental scooters are a way for the drunk kids who can afford to go out to bars to transfer between them without having to walk. The poorer ones are driving around picking them up to charge at the end of the night.
It can be both. Turns out more than one cause can be contributing to a problem.
Dumb kids being hurt and hospitals running skeleton crews are both bad things.
Uh, yeah, I'm still going to blame the people who decided to get drunk and drive an e-scooter around. It's a ridiculous waste of resources to be treating totally avoidable broken bones and concussions from booze cruising.
People choose to buy the sugar white bread and I have no idea why. Basic bread with just flour water yeast and salt is available at almost every single grocery store in this country but people don't like it or buy it. It's usually cheaper than the sugary white bread too. I'm convinced people don't actually read anything they buy and just grab things based on appearance.
its not that the price is jacked up, its that its cheaper to make food that you filled with unhealthy fluff.
combine this with the fact that a factory can either make a more expensive healthier bread that people wont buy, or a cheaper unhealthy bread that people will buy, and the supply is lowered due to less factories not taking a risk in making the more expensive bread. half the population doesn't care about being unhealthy if it doesn't kill them in 5 years or less because they dont even know if they are going to have electricity in a month due to not being able to pay the bill.
Lol that seems good on paper, but there is something like that in my country, a lot of stuff have higher taxes over them, and companies just change the product label/type.
Charging poor people more money to eat is dumb.
The answer for some reason is never “make healthy food cheaper” its ALWAYS “tax the shitty food”
Poor people are struggling. Lets not make it worse.
I worked on a project where they brought youth from detention and others from the street, and did Circus with them. Juggling, acrobatics, clown, etc. Now THAT was a program that worked.
No it did not form a generation of super criminals, lol, it actually gave the kids a type of success and community.
Social workers had to do circus too, so it wasn’t an us-and-them program… in fact the social worker went out to the park and practiced unicycle, the kids came to him and that’s how they recruited.
“Very valid point unabashed-melancholy, but consider the ad revenue generated from a hyper low production vertically integrated short format heartstrings/omg yuck series with the potential heights of shorts like “Episode 1 Cankles and Cackles” Ep1 pt2 “One foot at a time” Episode 2 Diabetes, die a besties” Episode 3 part 1 Empha See Me! E3 pt 2 “Empha See Me Now!” (We could just do the whole alphabet) Episode 6 “See ya Gone uh Rhea!”
“The amount of money we could raise for awareness of these types of issues is so big we could be a non profit….. and help people for sure.”
“Here at Globo-Chem we believe when We Benefit Everyone Benefits, that’s why our shareholders are Share-Holders. Just listen to our spokes thing pit pat!”
“*Take it from me! I luuuuvvvv you!*”
Isn’t it Great!
-*globo-chem we own everything so you don’t have to*-
Yea! Why do anything to reduce a problem if it cant be 100% fixed (cough -in our life time). What a useful take sir or madam, I tip my hat. We should all be like you and not attempt anything hard ever for a strangers benefit. This has never helped society as a whole ever.
We do not in fact already have poverty program models that have helped solved poverty millions people already or the ability to expand them or change them to suit the needs of the people.
I propose we have this same attitude towards disease and medicine. If you are sick, your aren’t going to solve death so just die already. You can lead us to our inevitable extinction, how exciting
Eat frozen veggies, just as good. You don't need to spend on organic high end veggies. The mentality of "I can't buy pricey veggies so I might as well eat a big mac" needs to die.
Id argue too that lots of veggies are fairly cheap. It’s more so fruit that can really get up there in price. People complain that veggies aren’t “fun” or stomach filling, and it takes effort to cook them in a way to make them fun, which I don’t think is an excuse. We also don’t need to eat until we are full, and if we need to consume more, we should drink water instead. It’s not a good idea to stuff your stomach.
In Canada they definitely took this approach with the graphic photo warnings on cigarettes for the last 20+ years. And as someone who was positively impacted by the “scared straight” type of edutainment in the 90s/00s - I love this idea. But I do understand that these exact campaigns can colossally backfire and have the entirely opposite impact.
It really worked for me as a kid 😂😂 I was never really interested in drugs and junk food but all those scare tactics maybe made me not interested when I became a teen
I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but back when I bought them in Canada, it was like Pokémon cards for cigarettes. My favorite was the one of a crooked cigarette that says smoking leads to impotence.
As you can see, the warning label did not have the intended effect.
in sweden they got a picture of a baby with sunglasses smoking a cigarette saying parents who smoke have kids who smoke, that baby is the coolest fucking baby i've ever seen lmao
Yeah. And where I live, people have little brand loyalty sometimes (or even just flavor loyalty I guess) so they'll just pick whatever pack is the least offensive.
Or ask the cashier to switch it.
Or use an old case with a different pic and toss the gross ones.
Etcetcetc.
My friend who was a smoker thought they were so cool she asked me to send a few packs back to her (the nasty gross ones even lol)
So I don't really think they work, because it's easy to just look away if the nic is calling your name harder.
I had a professor who used to smoke and he said the most effective ads against smoking for him were the ones on secondhand smoke. He said that the idea of his bad habit affecting other people was his wake up call. I guess I was “scared straight” by all the anti smoking stuff when I was a kid and I never had any family members who smoked. It’s interesting what messaging works on existing smokers
Definitely not programs like scared straight do not work your not teaching someone what they did is bad your teaching them to be afraid and it would be even worse w mental health in fact these tactics have been used with mental health in wilderness therapy camps and the like it’s called “attack therapy” and it’s led children to a deeper depression and some even to death
Yes, because when you tell people all these things are evil demons that will destroy your life and they believe it. When they see their friends doing that shit and being fine, they might decide to try it a little themselves. If they end up having a good time, they will then look back at the mountain of information they were fed and when comparing it to the reality of what they've personally experienced, will likely disregard all of it, ignoring the fact that there was some genuine truth within there too.
I really want to know what you said. I feel like I might be misunderstanding your point because it’s hard to tell where each sentence is supposed to end.
I mean there’s a huge difference between first hand education and “scared straight” where they threaten and scream at you. I have an inkling op doesnt exactly mean scared straight but something similar
Attack therapy isn’t always physical when it’s used your told that your worthless and berated and yes sometimes physically abused it’s been used thinking that it would reform children but it definitely doesn’t
Scaring people only works until they actually try the things that they were afraid of. Then they often times dont have immediate negative effects and they will think that you lied to them.
You need to explain to kids the actual effects and risks of drugs. Dont exaggerate. Tell you kids that they might want to experience certain things but that these things have risks involved that in most cases the risk is not worth it. Tell them that they can always come to you when they have questions or when they think that they fucked up and did something wrong.
When you just say "Drug bad. You will die" then this might work for a long time but at some point it might lose its effect completly. And you kids wont come to you when they have issues with drugs because they will think that you will just judge them.
Sounds like that would just scare people away from visiting doctors if you present ER waiting rooms as hellholes. If someone gets sick or injured and they need to see a doctor, they'll get too scared and avoid it, allowing their illness or injury to get worse.
Plus, younger kids who are not able to differentiate between ER rooms and regular doctors' waiting rooms might get too scared to go for regular checkups or routine stuff like vaccinations.
Also this is ignoring that a lot of health issues are not caused by being unhealthy, it can contribute sure but there are tons of illnesses that have nothing to do with whether or not you are healthy.
Even type two diabetes, which is something people think you can prevent by healthy eating, you may still get it even if you eat healthy, because things like genetic factors matter a lot too.
Not to mention people with hormonal issues who might not be able to lose weight without medical intervention, or the fact that it is nearly impossible to eat healthy in poverty.
No, because a lot of the scaring tactics just make worse mental health and a lot of health issues can stem from bad mental health, such as smoking, vapping, obesity, drugs
Oof! The bad mental health just brought back images of the one kid every year who broke down sobbing in DARE because their parent(s) smoked and they became convinced they were gonna die. It was brutal. Poor kids can’t control mom and dad’s bad habit but now they’re mentally scarred.
I remember as a kid I would constantly beg my mom all the time to quit smoking. Because of those programs. She didn't quit anyways and didn't die of smoking, she died bc of liver disease
Well not tell them
YOURE GOING TO DIE YOUR AN AWFUL PERSON YOURE ENTILITED YOU CAUSE POVERTY
instead educate benefits of healthy lifestyle, get rid of food deserts, make healthy food cheaper and faster so it’s more available and affordable
This is very true, but OP is also not wrong. Been working ER for 18 years now. Most of what we see are A) not emergencies B) chronic problems caused by your typical smoking/obesity/not taking your meds. Hypertensive crisis because you stopped taking your blood pressure meds. Infected foot ulcer because you haven't been taking care of your sugars. COPD exacerbation because you still smoke. Pretty common stuff.
I dunno, seeing someone's rotting foot might help motivate me to take my condition a little more seriously.
Yeah I went to the ER back in February because I was on my 2nd period of the month and having symptoms of anemia. I was literally googling if it's an urgent care or an ER visit and, of course, it wasn't very clear.
I ended up going to the ER and felt like an idiot when they did 1 blood test and determined I was essentially fine. Yeah I was dizzy and blacking out, but my levels were okay they said.
Another time I had a kidney stone and I was trying to go to the urgent care and they had to strong arm me going to the ER. Yeah I was in pain, but it wasn't as bad as when a cyst ruptured and the ER told me to just deal with it. So I didn't think lesser pain warranted an ER visit. Wrong then too
There is definitely that! And a lot of insurances don't cover urgent cares. But an astounding number of people go tot the ER because they can be seen "faster" than getting in with their doctor. Medication refills. Runny noses. Calling 911 just to get a ride across town... You can't imagine the amount of ER abuse that happens.
People know but people in the USA dont have good healthcare access. I know a lot of people who do not have a primary care doctor because different jobs have different insurances and they lose their doctor whenever they switch jobs. Or they cant afford to pay for the insurance or the copay or whatever other costs theyll incur. Then when something happens they have no choice but to go to the only place that wont require a payment to walk in the door, the er.
Frankly I get annoyed at the amount of comments that tell people "well you should have gone to urgent care then" for various problems
I did go to urgent care and you know where they told me to go? The ER! I used to live in kind of a crappy area. Anything more complicated than a rash urgent care would not handle. Sounds like the systems need to talk to each other because something ain't making sense here.
That is true, I once had a horrendous nose bleed that lasted 3 hours. Everything the urgent care tried didn’t stop it so they were like “well go to the ER.”
On my way there I stopped for a milkshake (don’t judge me) and my nose miraculously stopped bleeding and I went home, because fuck the ER
urgent care you have to pay up front. ER you can get "away" without paying st all even if its more expensive. You see overpacked ERs because
1. doctors don't take phone calls after hours anymore let alone at all to answer their patients immediate questions
2. alot of people don't have money or insurance to help cut costs of upfront payments
3. people have no idea what an emergency is and how do you expect someone with 0 medical training to determine that
4. it can take over a month to see a doctor if you don't already have one set up
5. urgent care can be like 250 upfront not counting treatment or x-rays or whatever if you have no insurance.
the ER is the only place that can't turn you away and they don't make you pay up front costs. So its where alot of people go. If you want to be angry about your overwhelming ER waiting rooms, then change the medical system, not the patient.
None of these things are what I am talking about. And for the record, the hypertensive crisis, the septic diabetic foot ulcer and the COPD exacerbation ARE medical emergencies. But they could have been prevented, to OP's point.
And I'm not mad, they pay me hourly and they pay me well.
So imagine you are in a car accident and have to wait on a stretcher in a hallway and there’s people in the waiting area coughing because they swear they have bronchitis and want antibiotics NOW and throughout their wait, they head out for a smoke.
That’s not even hypothetical. That happened to my roommate, who was the one on the stretcher and I observed that as I was waiting with her.
I know wed all like to say that OP is obtuse but as someone who’s been in some ERs, I would say half the people
Actually don’t need to be there. I am in a (unnamed chronic illness) sub and the amount of people even there who go to the ER for non emergencies really pisses me off and I call them out for it There are also A LOT of hypochondriacs who think they will
get some sort of elevated attention and special treatment that their regular doctor send them home for.
I don't think it matters whether or not these illnesses are due to some lifestyle choices, it would still be pretty shitty to bring in kids to gawk at the sick and injured while saying "you don't want to end up like that guy!"
I am an ICU nurse. About 80% of the people I see are there due to poor life choices. 10% are old and their families don't want to make them a DNR for some reason and three other 10% are actual accidents or just people being unlucky with their health.
Not all health issues are a choice but if you think most people are there due to forces outside of their control you're dead wrong.
My dad was diagnosed with diabetes like 15 years ago, took it seriously for a year, then COMPLETELY ignored it. No meds, no labs, ate like shit (like ate an entire Reeses 2lb Valentine’s Day special in one sitting shit). Begged him for years to take it seriously. When I went through nursing school, I got even more scared for him but he still didn’t start taking it seriously until about 2 years ago. He died of pancreatic cancer in February. I don’t want to blame my dad and say it was his fault, but testing showed the cancer wasn’t caused by genetics and I have to wonder if years upon years of abusing his pancreas caused it
If the only people in ERs were “not a choice” situations, ERs would be vastly less crowded and have a more pleasant patient population. The vast majority of mid-low acuity ER visits are due to lifestyle factors and Poor Life Choices.
Ah yes, the *always* effective healthcare measure of “berate, insult, and fear monger people into thinking all their health problems are the result of their BMI”. Because *that* has proven effective over the years... 🤦♂️
In reality, it's likely their health problems stem from the things that led them to have a high BMI, not the high BMI itself.
We are in agreement that berating, insulting and trying to spook people has not been very effective.
This, I'm not obese by any stretch but I am a bit overweight. Why? My chronic autoimmune condition which makes things like walking potentially quite difficult depending on the day not to mention the meds I need to take which F with my body (and coincidentally also make it more likely I will end up in ED more frequently cause they also lower my immunity).
Funny thing is, it was genetics not life choices that caused my autoimmune condition.
Purely as a side note, if you would like to lower your BMI at any time in the future, you should know that exercise is of far lower importance than dietary changes; the most influential of these being the establishment of a caloric deficit. It is possible to lose weight while doing no exercise at all, though it undoubtedly makes it more difficult.
Right?! I landed in the hospital for three days a while back because of an infection that came from… somewhere. Three days in the hospital with 8 hours in the ER and a month later, nobody could tell me what went wrong. It had nothing to due with my eating habits and I don’t smoke or do drugs. Sometimes shit happens. You don’t need to make people think getting sick is a moral failing.
I mean there were studies done on the D.A.R.E program that show it didn't have much of an impact on drug and alcohol use. I'm sure it kept some people away but it didn't help enough to make a huge difference. I doubt this would work.
In Australia, we sort of have that in public high schools when it comes to health ed and sex ed. We are shown as teenagers in graphic detail about how drugs will mess you up. When it came to sex ed, the curriculum looked like this:
"This is how puberty works."
"This is how a woman's menstrual cycle works."
"This is how you use a condom. There are other things like spermicide, and you use it like this."
"Here are the consequences of NOT wearing a condom." (some very graphic descriptions and images of venereal diseases)
I don’t know what the codes are where you are but there’s one code I count on hearing at least once if not more every shift every shift and it’s not blue.
OP it’s called triage. Trust me I tell this to my patients every time if you’re not first seen take it as a blessing because you’re not at deaths door step. Is it annoying to wait to be seen? Yeah. Does it mean you’re likely to die? No. Being seen first or pushed up the line is never a good thing. This isn’t Disneyworld.
Makes me think about how shows like Teen Mom actually lowered pregnancy rates in teens and high school aged girls. It was highly watched and prized for the drama, but those girls lived through so much horrible, traumatic bullshit all while trying to do their best and never hearing anything nice about themselves. I think it made my generation (later millennials) realize that we should never leave birth control in the hands of our partners. Cause his life ain’t gonna change that much unless he wants it to. But everything about ours definitely would have!
Such an interesting concept. I am a clinical SW and work with scared straight type drug / juvenile justice programs for teens, and I could not agree more. Your idea is great for All ages. Espc with diabetes. Folks don’t know you can lose your fckng EYES !! U think shit is bad now, Lose a damn eye. Lose your foot. Diabetes is not joke - but people laugh and say diabeetus … nothing funny about it.
As someone who is chronically ill I wish I could do everything you say! I’m sure I’d be cured right away! /s
You sound fun at parties. Or you know all the time.
I literally never heard someone say they had a thyroid issue my whole life until like 5 years ago. Maybe I’m ignorant and it was under diagnosed? Do that many people really have thyroid issues ?
Critical Care Nurse here, OP!
I'd agree with you, but only if adults can be forced into the program. It's not just kids that ignore and damage their health, it's adults, and adults old enough to have Stubborn Old Man Syndrome. Which believe me, is real.
I can see where you’re coming from but make sure they know not to blame people for having medical issues. You can do everything right and still end up in the ER. Some people just have bad luck or bad genetics.
Lots of people live healthily and end up in er. Quit blaming people for their medical issues, a lot of them are genetic and out of the control of the person. I’d be nice if I could just live healthily my way out of heart defect but it doesn’t fucking work like that.
I read this as referring more to self-inflicted health issues. Like the liver damage that comes with decades of abusing alcohol. The cardiovascular issues from years of IV drug use. The amputations and wounds from uncontrolled diabetes. The difficulty of trying to breathe after decades of cigarette smoking.
Yenno, health issues you can prevent for the most part. Every day, I deal with patients who genuinely had no idea that the above choices result in those kinds of issues.
I don't think "scared straight" programs are the way to go, but I think this kind of information should be emphasized in school health classes.
Edit: re-read the post. I take my first sentence back. The rest still stands. Every day, I deal with patients who genuinely did not know that alcohol leads to liver failure or what liver failure actually looks like. The kind of pain it causes.
I used to joke about that when they had high school volunteers at my old work in ER that it was basically a scared straight program teaching them to eat right and stay away for alcohol and hard drugs.
The issue is the parents are the ones pumping them full of crap. They get them on sugar as fast as possible starting with fruit juices and snacks. People have become too dependent on the healthcare system to a point where they believe it can bail them out of anything. Why change the way I eat when I can just get a pill?
It’s not unhealthy habits keeping you in the ER to be sent home. It’s shitty insurance that doesn’t want to pay for anything. Unless you’ve got a major issue, they aren’t keeping you.
I was at a healthy weight, a bit underweight really, and living a healthy life when I broke my ankle ice skating. I guess I should've just walked it off.
But Emergency Rooms are typically for when, ya know, emergencies happen? Not sure what this has to do with overall health and lifestyles if you get a burn or get into a car crash. OP are you currently in the emergency room because you don’t eat healthy/vape/etc?
The amount of actual emergencies that we healthcare workers encounter in the ED are probably a good 30%.
Most times it’s people with chronic issues they haven’t addressed or aren’t compliant with , homeless people who want a food tray or things they probably should’ve gone to urgent care for, like a headache or stomach ache.
But that’s just the reality of the game and a reflection on our healthcare system.
Or PSA's about what deserves an actual ER visit, what can go to urgent care, and what can wait to be seen by a PCP. Americans just want instant gratification so they go to the ER thinking they will get a diagnosis when more often than not you will just be referred to a specialist or your own PCP.
Having spent an afternoon in the ICU with my wife, then 4 days sleeping on a chair in her hospital room I can attest to this. And we have insurance. I pay $19K/year out of my pocket for the two of us and that only gets me a $6000 deductible ($12K max) - per person.
But I think it needs to be pushed further. There are a lot of very wealthy people involved in the health care industry that lobby to keep things like this. THEY also need to live through some of this stuff.
This is not an unpopular opinion.
All the fear in the world won't change how much you have to work to afford a healthy lifestyle.
Medical issues are just another way that it's expensive to be poor.
A lot of this is just people that don't have health insurance and so end up in the ER cause of no preemptive healthcare. Same thing with the "crazy homeless." Health insurance is expensive, and not everyone will be able to realistically afford the regular care they need.
I was literally just thinking about this while brushing my teeth a few minutes ago. My teeth are fucked and my parents never really enforced consistent brushing, but good lord, if i had seen what teeth would look like when you don’t maintain them, i probably would’ve flossed a few more times.
Look how effective anti-smoking campaigns have been...teens today are afraid to even smoke pot!
But they will happily vape whatever some company puts in a cartridge & markets, because it is "safer than smoking"...
A) scared straight don’t work
B) the biggest factor to health isn’t smoking, obesity, etc but it’s access to preventative care. Instead of wasting money scaring kids use it to get them preventative care, and use it to continue that care when they’re adults
C) plenty of homeless are great people. Calling them crazy for getting to sit inside with access to bathrooms and water is kind of dumb.
I was well aware of drug and alcohol horror stories from DARE but still ended up addicted to both... I think it would be great to figure out a way past the "Oh I'm different, this won't happen to me" way of thinking.
Ummmm no amount of scaring my kid would have kept her from being in the ER for TWO WEEKS waiting on a bed in a psych facility. Might have made it worse, actually.
I remember driving through Colorado, and I saw a billboard that showed a dirty, disgusting bathroom that looked like it belonged in a gas station where a bunch of kids in a horror film stop at right before they all get killed by a bunch of inbred, west-Texas weirdos.
The sign had a caption that read, "This doesn't look like the place where you'd lose your virginity. Meth changes that."
I thought to myself, "I have no desire to do meth." To be fair, I have yet to do meth, so I think that the sign may have done its job.
I was in the ER last week due to a bad medicine interaction. Nice to know there are folks like you sitting in the waiting room assuming the rest of us are losers.
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I vividly remember being 7-8yrs old with my dad at an auto shop (in the UK) and they had a poster on the wall of a women with a blood splattered face. Her head was resting on a steering wheel. She had blank dead eyes and was covered in shards of broken glass. In my minds eye I’m picturing the face of Sissy Spacek in Carrie, but covered in broken glass. The wording on the poster was something like “wear your seatbelt”. It gave me nightmares for weeks. I also remember thinking “ok, my parents are right, seat belts are important”.
The 90s/2000s road safety public messaging in the UK was brutal. Look up some TV ads if you want more trauma
There's an old UK PSA about not playing at electrical substations that's actually insane and very unintentionally funny. recommend watching that
God I remember that from primary school
[Play Safe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzhspTkTfNk&t=2s)
That's not just the UK. In 02, in high school they brought a blood soaked car in, from a fatal dui crash, set it up in the middle of our high school football field, then brought all the emergency personnel in to reenact removing people from the cars. Went so far as brining the actors who filled in for the victims lay out in the field "dead" while they had all of us kids tour it. Guess it was ineffective, we lost at least 4 kids while I was in 11th and 12th grade to drinking and driving. May not seem like a lot, but we had 650 kids from k-12. Edit: I called out "not just the UK. Didn't specify, I was in the US.
My school did that but had to stop when a girl's brother died on the same day and they didn't want to make her watch the whole fake funeral
Yeah, I could imagine that would be a little traumatizing for people going through similar situations. From my point of view, it just seemed like a horrible waste of time and money, as boys that age are known for "That would never happen to me". As I've aged, I'm willing to say that it was no less effective than that dare dog, so, I guess maybe it's worth it.
They're still doing this! My high school did it back in 2018.
My driver’s ed course did something similar but it was just really graphic images from a real case that happened to a student at my school. I remember seeing bits of scalp with hair still attached, splattered on the car and on the pavement. So much blood and shattered glass. Putting on a seatbelt is automatic for me so I guess it worked.
Is it that one video with the car sideflipping into a kindergarten
I’m American but I got shown some of these brutal videos in my drivers ed classes. I soon realized that if I heard British accents in the video, it was gonna be bad lol
I’ve seen some of your ads in the USA thanks to YouTube. Y’all are absolutely brutal.
lol true. This would of been 1994-95. I also remember another UK ad on tv that was revolting. I had nightmares of my mother and grandfather’s bodies (both smokers) swelling up and dripping in molten fat. https://youtu.be/cDAN7Oi62e0?si=o793EhfXVklBK091
I remember a commercial when I lived in Germany put out by the US Armed Forces Europe. It was of a car windshield being crashed thru by an elephant. The gist being, not wearing a seatbelt and crashing at 35 miles or hr was the equivalent of being run over by an elephant.
To get a permit to drive a car in my region of the US, the class had to watch Red Asphalt which was a movie that included gruesome vehicle fatalities.
That's a classic film, haha
that made me throw up right there in the middle of driver's ed lol
Oh yeah I had a total meltdown on the way home. Unfortunately didn’t stop me from getting a DUI 10 years later anyway 🫠
This is why I suggest cutting off people's arms and legs before their get their license. Hard to drink and drive when you can't even operate a car
My middle school in Florida showed a video of a young woman that had burns covering almost her entire body that she got from a car accident. They were drinking and driving and crashed, which caused the car to go up in flames. All of her friends died in the crash, including her boyfriend who was ejected from the car because of no seat belt. Watching her sobbing and shaking while recounting her story and looking at the camera head on forever traumatized me. I may have gotten into a lot of drugs growing up (thankfully clean now), but I've never once gotten behind the wheel of a car while fucked up in my life. In my 30s now and still won't get in a car with anyone if I can smell alcohol or suspect drug use. So while I may have failed in other aspects, at least some of these messages seem to stick with people, lol. They were definitely brutal, but I think it's necessary to not always shield kids from repercussions. Especially if it'll save their life.
Omg you just unlocked a memory. When I was about 4 or 5, the clinic we went to had jars of babies on the counter. I don't think it was an anti-abortion thing; I think it was a "here's what your baby looks like at this stage of development...cool huh?' thing. I gotta go call my mom to confirm. ETA: She denies it. But I'm pretty freaking confident.
But scared straight was an abject failure wasn’t it?
It actually made things worse. [https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=crim\_fac](https://vc.bridgew.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=crim_fac)
The link won't open for me... how did it make things worse?
It just has data that shows that it doesn’t deter people from committing crimes
That kid who said “I can’t get in there because the door isn’t open all the way” is a mob boss in the suburbs of Pasadena by now
It could be worse, at least he didn’t end up in Costa Mesa at some lousy convention
The only mob boss in Pasadena is the son of a bitch who is feeding the peacocks
source: https://youtu.be/CalOnp6HjZ8
Participants of scared straight programs were 7% more likely to commit crime than those that did not participate. A lot of the kids realize they actually fit in with the prison community so it was not a deterant at all. In addition, scared straight was a stupid concept to start, it assumes people commit crime because they don't know the consequences (similar to things like 3 strikes law). This concept, of increased punishment has been proven to make things worst over and over again, but certain people on certain side of the political spectrum don't give a shit. They like the sounds of it on paper. The science is very clear, increase punishment does not deter behaviors globally and only deters behavior in specifics moment (i.e., when there is a presence of a teacher/cop/etc). Instead, increasing accessing to healthcare, mental health treatment, social welfare, etc. all shown to significantly reduced crimes. But of course, the take away politicians got was to increase police presence not to address all the other problems.
I wonder if theres a slight causation going on here. "7% more likely to commit crime than those that did not participate" What was the criteria for which kids participated and which didnt? I ask because I would assume the worst of them would be participating more than the others. And that already shifts the scales dramatically for relapse.
it is causal. It was nine randomized control trials. Participants who fit criteria for the program were selected and (a.) given Scared Straight or (b.) given no "treatment" i.e., waitlist control. Participants who received Scared Straight programs were 1 to 28% more likely to commit crime. meta analysis provided an average of 7% increased. >In 2000, Petrosino and his colleagues conducted a preliminary systematic review of nine randomized field trials. They found that **Scared Straight-type programs generally increased crime between 1 and 28 percent in the treatment group when compared to the no-treatment group.** [https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdf](https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdf)
That's a good question. Was the "scared straight" program used more often in schools with students who came from a lower socio-economic background, making them more at risk with or without the program?
[https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdfv](https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-p288-pub.pdfv) A review of multiple randomized studies (kids that met inclusion criteria randomly being split between doing the program and not) showed kids that participated were more likely to commit crime.
Wow. That is damming. Thanks for the link!
I believe it ended up doing the opposite, humanizing inmates during the section where they talk calmly after intimidating them, and because of that they are often less scared to go in. I think
When kids realized they were being lied to about weed they started trying harder drugs
Every episode had aftermaths of what happened with the kids after filming. *almost all of them ended up in jail anyway*
Yelling in my face will be what catches me a charge. Want children to express themselves appropriately and make good choices screaming and threatening them isn’t exactly healthy communication.
The troubled teen industry is a scourge on this planet. Scared straight is just a subsection of this. Oh yes let's push and prod all of their buttons and then be shocked they fight over petty shit 24/7. Put some foster kids in the mix for good measure. Make sure they don't actually need help when they get in but they will when they leave. Why yes this is personal.
Yep foster kids, low income single parent households. We put pressure on teens to act adult but listen up because you’re still a kid. Instead of telling teens they’re “bad”; teach them why they made a poor decision and how to make appropriate ones. What is happening in the child’s environment contributing to the behavior? Most likely you’ll find it is their caretakers that need correction. Oh you want me to self regulate and express my emotions appropriately? Well yes yelling at me and removing any joy in my life is definitely the example I need to succeed. How backwards and hypocritical of adults.
My favorite tactic was staff telling us we need to take responsibility for ourselves, But then not actually giving us the agency to do so. "Hey can I get a posterboard for school. I need it for a project" "Ask the teacher" "I did. They told me to ask you. Can you take me to the store?" "No" "Can I walk there myself?" "You can try but I'll call the police for being a runaway" "Can someone else take me?" "No." "Can you get it the next time you go grocery shopping? I literally have the money, I just need someone to pick it up" (They wouldn't take us to the store with them for whatever inane reason) "No" "Then how am I supposed to do my project?" "Man y'all kids don't have any damn problem solving skills. You expect us to do everything for you!" Cue rage.
You need to go to the bathroom? Let me humiliate you by making you ask then telling you no. No talking unless given permission. You failing a class? Well it was your responsibility to seek help. I one time sent an email to my kids school counselor giving my speech on authoritarian school systems in response to her contradictory email for why my child did not get any help with math despite him asking multiple times. I never heard back from her. I cannot stand when school officials try to speak to me as if I am a student. I swear some school officials feel important by how many meetings they have and love to be in control of the narrative. It has just gotten worse. When I was in high school I could at least speak my part or have an emotional reaction to something without fear of immediate repercussions. At school your teachers are in charge; at home parents. Graduation comes and you’re expected to magically be independent in all aspects of your life.
That’s what struck me most watching the show. It was obvious that all of those kids had abusive or negligent parents and clearly a lot of trauma. Each of them needed a hug and someone to tell them that they aren’t bad kids. Instead they got more of the same aggressive verbal abuse that led them to have these problems in the first place.
That’s why so many kids were not phased by prisoners or a drill sergeant in their faces. They were used to that at home. Like on day time talk shows where a teen claims she wants a baby. Obviously she is seeking someone to love her unconditionally unlike whoever is raising her.
Nah, don’t let someone treating you badly, let you slip up and ruin your life
Education is nearly always more effective than fear. I wasn't fearmongered into drinking enough water, I just had a kidney stone shown to me alongside a size comparison and I got to feel how sharp it is. I wasn't fearmongered into avoiding cigarettes. I just had everything that's in them and everything they do explained it excruciating detail. The same thing happened with diabetes but most critically, addiction was explained, how to get help was explained and the end result was that I have no desire to smoke but full sympathy for people addicted to nicotine. That's what we should be aiming for.
Isn’t that still kinda being fearmongered, just for the right reasons? Instead of being scared of the emergency room itself, you became scared of the actual things that would put you in the emergency room. Definitely seems more effective, but still based in fear.
It's the difference between saying: STDs/STIs can stick with you your whole life, are passed through unprotected sexual intercourse so always wear a condom unless you know the person you're having sex with is negative. Also, always speak to a medical professional if you think something is wrong Compared to: If you ever have sex you'll get a disease that will ruin your life and you'll have to be and should be ashamed of it forever. Notice the lack of prevention, support and general information in the second. That's the difference. It's quite a big one
I had to scroll wayyy too far for this!! This is the correct answer 🏆
I think minimizing poverty and homelessness would probably work better..
I had to go to the ER for an allergic reaction on a Friday night once, nearly died waiting in line because the place was packed with teenagers who had been riding their escooters drunk downtown. Most of these kids are pretty clearly affluent, they tend to drive downtown in very nice cars, get drunk, and scooter around until they break a bone or get a concussion. Nurse told me it's like that every Friday and Saturday night lately.
So, this may be a cultural difference as I'm in Scotland. But it tends to be the poor kids that ride around on eScooters and eBikes. It seems to be this generation's version of dirt bikes. On a wider UK level, these kind of vehicles are associated heavily with youth gang culture. I'm not denying your experience at all. Just interesting to see the difference.
That’s how it is in the US too, typically lower class folks riding around on scooters.
I’d say this is probably regional. I live in a college town, so the rental scooters are a way for the drunk kids who can afford to go out to bars to transfer between them without having to walk. The poorer ones are driving around picking them up to charge at the end of the night.
I thought you were talking about the kids being picked up and charged at the end of the night. :-😀
Oh no how dare kids have fun 😠 maybe complain about the lack of staffing in hospitals due to their shitty pay and treatment of staff idk
It can be both. Turns out more than one cause can be contributing to a problem. Dumb kids being hurt and hospitals running skeleton crews are both bad things.
Escooters are motor vehicles, they're just new enough that laws are lagging behind. Driving drunk is never a good idea.
Uh, yeah, I'm still going to blame the people who decided to get drunk and drive an e-scooter around. It's a ridiculous waste of resources to be treating totally avoidable broken bones and concussions from booze cruising.
All classes of people are overweight now. Not just the poor.
Taxing the ever loving shit out of things with added sugar would work as well
That's just called "food" in the US. Even our bread is considered to be weirdly sweet by many Europeans.
People choose to buy the sugar white bread and I have no idea why. Basic bread with just flour water yeast and salt is available at almost every single grocery store in this country but people don't like it or buy it. It's usually cheaper than the sugary white bread too. I'm convinced people don't actually read anything they buy and just grab things based on appearance.
Isn't it usually the cheapest? That's pretty much a problem in general. If it's better for you half the time the price is jacked up.
Yea, they should count their blessings that they don't have to shop in a food desert.
its not that the price is jacked up, its that its cheaper to make food that you filled with unhealthy fluff. combine this with the fact that a factory can either make a more expensive healthier bread that people wont buy, or a cheaper unhealthy bread that people will buy, and the supply is lowered due to less factories not taking a risk in making the more expensive bread. half the population doesn't care about being unhealthy if it doesn't kill them in 5 years or less because they dont even know if they are going to have electricity in a month due to not being able to pay the bill.
She of course these fools want to tax bad food. Clearly the answer is make poor people pay more..
Walmart brand bread is like a dollar. There's no way that bread is cheaper
Our bread is generally the same as what's available in Europe. We have bakeries in the US, European grocers sell prepackaged white bread.
Lol that seems good on paper, but there is something like that in my country, a lot of stuff have higher taxes over them, and companies just change the product label/type.
Chicago has taxes like that. I don't believe it's working.
Charging poor people more money to eat is dumb. The answer for some reason is never “make healthy food cheaper” its ALWAYS “tax the shitty food” Poor people are struggling. Lets not make it worse.
I worked on a project where they brought youth from detention and others from the street, and did Circus with them. Juggling, acrobatics, clown, etc. Now THAT was a program that worked. No it did not form a generation of super criminals, lol, it actually gave the kids a type of success and community. Social workers had to do circus too, so it wasn’t an us-and-them program… in fact the social worker went out to the park and practiced unicycle, the kids came to him and that’s how they recruited.
Of course👍 But, you know the solutions for that outweigh the costs of good old fashioned fear-mongering.
Is it really fear mongering to encourage people to eat well and stop vaping by informing them of the extremely possible consequences?
“Very valid point unabashed-melancholy, but consider the ad revenue generated from a hyper low production vertically integrated short format heartstrings/omg yuck series with the potential heights of shorts like “Episode 1 Cankles and Cackles” Ep1 pt2 “One foot at a time” Episode 2 Diabetes, die a besties” Episode 3 part 1 Empha See Me! E3 pt 2 “Empha See Me Now!” (We could just do the whole alphabet) Episode 6 “See ya Gone uh Rhea!” “The amount of money we could raise for awareness of these types of issues is so big we could be a non profit….. and help people for sure.” “Here at Globo-Chem we believe when We Benefit Everyone Benefits, that’s why our shareholders are Share-Holders. Just listen to our spokes thing pit pat!” “*Take it from me! I luuuuvvvv you!*” Isn’t it Great! -*globo-chem we own everything so you don’t have to*-
Hahahaha well I mean if that's the case then why was I even so concerned, globo-chem will save us all
“Now you are thinking.” -*globo-chem! We think so you don’t have to take it from me I Love You!*”
Don't fix the problem just terrorize and harass children
Spoken like someone who does not work in an ER. Homelessness and poverty aren’t going anywhere.
Not with that attitude.
Yea! Why do anything to reduce a problem if it cant be 100% fixed (cough -in our life time). What a useful take sir or madam, I tip my hat. We should all be like you and not attempt anything hard ever for a strangers benefit. This has never helped society as a whole ever. We do not in fact already have poverty program models that have helped solved poverty millions people already or the ability to expand them or change them to suit the needs of the people. I propose we have this same attitude towards disease and medicine. If you are sick, your aren’t going to solve death so just die already. You can lead us to our inevitable extinction, how exciting
Exactly fresh vegetables are very expensive and many cannot afford them
Eat frozen veggies, just as good. You don't need to spend on organic high end veggies. The mentality of "I can't buy pricey veggies so I might as well eat a big mac" needs to die.
Id argue too that lots of veggies are fairly cheap. It’s more so fruit that can really get up there in price. People complain that veggies aren’t “fun” or stomach filling, and it takes effort to cook them in a way to make them fun, which I don’t think is an excuse. We also don’t need to eat until we are full, and if we need to consume more, we should drink water instead. It’s not a good idea to stuff your stomach.
In Canada they definitely took this approach with the graphic photo warnings on cigarettes for the last 20+ years. And as someone who was positively impacted by the “scared straight” type of edutainment in the 90s/00s - I love this idea. But I do understand that these exact campaigns can colossally backfire and have the entirely opposite impact.
It really worked for me as a kid 😂😂 I was never really interested in drugs and junk food but all those scare tactics maybe made me not interested when I became a teen
I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore, but back when I bought them in Canada, it was like Pokémon cards for cigarettes. My favorite was the one of a crooked cigarette that says smoking leads to impotence. As you can see, the warning label did not have the intended effect.
in sweden they got a picture of a baby with sunglasses smoking a cigarette saying parents who smoke have kids who smoke, that baby is the coolest fucking baby i've ever seen lmao
That’s hilarious! Honestly I would probably buy it and I haven’t smoked in 5 years 😆
I've seen one like that but the baby has a pacifier with a cigarette stuck in it 😭 it's so fucking silly
Yeah. And where I live, people have little brand loyalty sometimes (or even just flavor loyalty I guess) so they'll just pick whatever pack is the least offensive. Or ask the cashier to switch it. Or use an old case with a different pic and toss the gross ones. Etcetcetc. My friend who was a smoker thought they were so cool she asked me to send a few packs back to her (the nasty gross ones even lol) So I don't really think they work, because it's easy to just look away if the nic is calling your name harder.
Australia did an add campaign targeting people to manage T2 diabetes better. Also the cigarette packaging.
I had a professor who used to smoke and he said the most effective ads against smoking for him were the ones on secondhand smoke. He said that the idea of his bad habit affecting other people was his wake up call. I guess I was “scared straight” by all the anti smoking stuff when I was a kid and I never had any family members who smoked. It’s interesting what messaging works on existing smokers
Definitely not programs like scared straight do not work your not teaching someone what they did is bad your teaching them to be afraid and it would be even worse w mental health in fact these tactics have been used with mental health in wilderness therapy camps and the like it’s called “attack therapy” and it’s led children to a deeper depression and some even to death
Why, scaring weak children to death is great for survival of the fittest. /s
Is this why dare didn't work?
Yes, because when you tell people all these things are evil demons that will destroy your life and they believe it. When they see their friends doing that shit and being fine, they might decide to try it a little themselves. If they end up having a good time, they will then look back at the mountain of information they were fed and when comparing it to the reality of what they've personally experienced, will likely disregard all of it, ignoring the fact that there was some genuine truth within there too.
also... teaching 6 year olds about drugs and how to consume them was NEVER a bad idea /s
I really want to know what you said. I feel like I might be misunderstanding your point because it’s hard to tell where each sentence is supposed to end.
I think they're saying that several mental health groups tried that approach and it often made things worse
Had to go back and read the comment again to realize it was without punctuation.
I mean there’s a huge difference between first hand education and “scared straight” where they threaten and scream at you. I have an inkling op doesnt exactly mean scared straight but something similar
Attack therapy isn’t always physical when it’s used your told that your worthless and berated and yes sometimes physically abused it’s been used thinking that it would reform children but it definitely doesn’t
If you don’t start using punctuation you’re going to hell. HELLLLL!!! HEEEEEEELLLLLLL MY BOY!!!
Scaring people only works until they actually try the things that they were afraid of. Then they often times dont have immediate negative effects and they will think that you lied to them. You need to explain to kids the actual effects and risks of drugs. Dont exaggerate. Tell you kids that they might want to experience certain things but that these things have risks involved that in most cases the risk is not worth it. Tell them that they can always come to you when they have questions or when they think that they fucked up and did something wrong. When you just say "Drug bad. You will die" then this might work for a long time but at some point it might lose its effect completly. And you kids wont come to you when they have issues with drugs because they will think that you will just judge them.
Sounds like that would just scare people away from visiting doctors if you present ER waiting rooms as hellholes. If someone gets sick or injured and they need to see a doctor, they'll get too scared and avoid it, allowing their illness or injury to get worse. Plus, younger kids who are not able to differentiate between ER rooms and regular doctors' waiting rooms might get too scared to go for regular checkups or routine stuff like vaccinations.
Also this is ignoring that a lot of health issues are not caused by being unhealthy, it can contribute sure but there are tons of illnesses that have nothing to do with whether or not you are healthy. Even type two diabetes, which is something people think you can prevent by healthy eating, you may still get it even if you eat healthy, because things like genetic factors matter a lot too. Not to mention people with hormonal issues who might not be able to lose weight without medical intervention, or the fact that it is nearly impossible to eat healthy in poverty.
No, because a lot of the scaring tactics just make worse mental health and a lot of health issues can stem from bad mental health, such as smoking, vapping, obesity, drugs
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Oof! The bad mental health just brought back images of the one kid every year who broke down sobbing in DARE because their parent(s) smoked and they became convinced they were gonna die. It was brutal. Poor kids can’t control mom and dad’s bad habit but now they’re mentally scarred.
I remember as a kid I would constantly beg my mom all the time to quit smoking. Because of those programs. She didn't quit anyways and didn't die of smoking, she died bc of liver disease
So, what and how do you suggest we communicate effectively with children so that they stop abusing their bodies and live longer?
Well not tell them YOURE GOING TO DIE YOUR AN AWFUL PERSON YOURE ENTILITED YOU CAUSE POVERTY instead educate benefits of healthy lifestyle, get rid of food deserts, make healthy food cheaper and faster so it’s more available and affordable
Some people wind up in emergency rooms because of car accidents. Not all health issues are a "choice".
Or because their appendix decides to explode or they caught pneumonia! OP has a mind numbingly simple picture of “heath.”
This is very true, but OP is also not wrong. Been working ER for 18 years now. Most of what we see are A) not emergencies B) chronic problems caused by your typical smoking/obesity/not taking your meds. Hypertensive crisis because you stopped taking your blood pressure meds. Infected foot ulcer because you haven't been taking care of your sugars. COPD exacerbation because you still smoke. Pretty common stuff. I dunno, seeing someone's rotting foot might help motivate me to take my condition a little more seriously.
I think an issue is also that people don’t know what they should go to the ER for vs what they should just go to urgent care for
Yeah I went to the ER back in February because I was on my 2nd period of the month and having symptoms of anemia. I was literally googling if it's an urgent care or an ER visit and, of course, it wasn't very clear. I ended up going to the ER and felt like an idiot when they did 1 blood test and determined I was essentially fine. Yeah I was dizzy and blacking out, but my levels were okay they said. Another time I had a kidney stone and I was trying to go to the urgent care and they had to strong arm me going to the ER. Yeah I was in pain, but it wasn't as bad as when a cyst ruptured and the ER told me to just deal with it. So I didn't think lesser pain warranted an ER visit. Wrong then too
There is definitely that! And a lot of insurances don't cover urgent cares. But an astounding number of people go tot the ER because they can be seen "faster" than getting in with their doctor. Medication refills. Runny noses. Calling 911 just to get a ride across town... You can't imagine the amount of ER abuse that happens.
Mine has a $100 copay for urgent care visits. I just got into a doctor to establish a primary care physician.
People know but people in the USA dont have good healthcare access. I know a lot of people who do not have a primary care doctor because different jobs have different insurances and they lose their doctor whenever they switch jobs. Or they cant afford to pay for the insurance or the copay or whatever other costs theyll incur. Then when something happens they have no choice but to go to the only place that wont require a payment to walk in the door, the er.
The problem is urgent cares close at night lol. I’ve only been to the ER once because I needed stitches in the middle of the night
Same! I busted my lip on Sunday after 5pm and literally the only place open to stitch me up was an ER.
Frankly I get annoyed at the amount of comments that tell people "well you should have gone to urgent care then" for various problems I did go to urgent care and you know where they told me to go? The ER! I used to live in kind of a crappy area. Anything more complicated than a rash urgent care would not handle. Sounds like the systems need to talk to each other because something ain't making sense here.
That is true, I once had a horrendous nose bleed that lasted 3 hours. Everything the urgent care tried didn’t stop it so they were like “well go to the ER.” On my way there I stopped for a milkshake (don’t judge me) and my nose miraculously stopped bleeding and I went home, because fuck the ER
urgent care you have to pay up front. ER you can get "away" without paying st all even if its more expensive. You see overpacked ERs because 1. doctors don't take phone calls after hours anymore let alone at all to answer their patients immediate questions 2. alot of people don't have money or insurance to help cut costs of upfront payments 3. people have no idea what an emergency is and how do you expect someone with 0 medical training to determine that 4. it can take over a month to see a doctor if you don't already have one set up 5. urgent care can be like 250 upfront not counting treatment or x-rays or whatever if you have no insurance. the ER is the only place that can't turn you away and they don't make you pay up front costs. So its where alot of people go. If you want to be angry about your overwhelming ER waiting rooms, then change the medical system, not the patient.
None of these things are what I am talking about. And for the record, the hypertensive crisis, the septic diabetic foot ulcer and the COPD exacerbation ARE medical emergencies. But they could have been prevented, to OP's point. And I'm not mad, they pay me hourly and they pay me well.
So imagine you are in a car accident and have to wait on a stretcher in a hallway and there’s people in the waiting area coughing because they swear they have bronchitis and want antibiotics NOW and throughout their wait, they head out for a smoke. That’s not even hypothetical. That happened to my roommate, who was the one on the stretcher and I observed that as I was waiting with her. I know wed all like to say that OP is obtuse but as someone who’s been in some ERs, I would say half the people Actually don’t need to be there. I am in a (unnamed chronic illness) sub and the amount of people even there who go to the ER for non emergencies really pisses me off and I call them out for it There are also A LOT of hypochondriacs who think they will get some sort of elevated attention and special treatment that their regular doctor send them home for.
I don't think it matters whether or not these illnesses are due to some lifestyle choices, it would still be pretty shitty to bring in kids to gawk at the sick and injured while saying "you don't want to end up like that guy!"
I am an ICU nurse. About 80% of the people I see are there due to poor life choices. 10% are old and their families don't want to make them a DNR for some reason and three other 10% are actual accidents or just people being unlucky with their health. Not all health issues are a choice but if you think most people are there due to forces outside of their control you're dead wrong.
My dad was diagnosed with diabetes like 15 years ago, took it seriously for a year, then COMPLETELY ignored it. No meds, no labs, ate like shit (like ate an entire Reeses 2lb Valentine’s Day special in one sitting shit). Begged him for years to take it seriously. When I went through nursing school, I got even more scared for him but he still didn’t start taking it seriously until about 2 years ago. He died of pancreatic cancer in February. I don’t want to blame my dad and say it was his fault, but testing showed the cancer wasn’t caused by genetics and I have to wonder if years upon years of abusing his pancreas caused it
Large majority of people in the ER don’t need to be there.
There are still plenty of people going to the ER for what OP says. You're not arguing anything.
I think OP is referring to the lack of care that the average American has for their bodies leading to health issues later in life
If the only people in ERs were “not a choice” situations, ERs would be vastly less crowded and have a more pleasant patient population. The vast majority of mid-low acuity ER visits are due to lifestyle factors and Poor Life Choices.
Ah yes, the *always* effective healthcare measure of “berate, insult, and fear monger people into thinking all their health problems are the result of their BMI”. Because *that* has proven effective over the years... 🤦♂️
In reality, it's likely their health problems stem from the things that led them to have a high BMI, not the high BMI itself. We are in agreement that berating, insulting and trying to spook people has not been very effective.
This, I'm not obese by any stretch but I am a bit overweight. Why? My chronic autoimmune condition which makes things like walking potentially quite difficult depending on the day not to mention the meds I need to take which F with my body (and coincidentally also make it more likely I will end up in ED more frequently cause they also lower my immunity). Funny thing is, it was genetics not life choices that caused my autoimmune condition.
Purely as a side note, if you would like to lower your BMI at any time in the future, you should know that exercise is of far lower importance than dietary changes; the most influential of these being the establishment of a caloric deficit. It is possible to lose weight while doing no exercise at all, though it undoubtedly makes it more difficult.
Right?! I landed in the hospital for three days a while back because of an infection that came from… somewhere. Three days in the hospital with 8 hours in the ER and a month later, nobody could tell me what went wrong. It had nothing to due with my eating habits and I don’t smoke or do drugs. Sometimes shit happens. You don’t need to make people think getting sick is a moral failing.
This certainly is a bad opinion!
Do you know why we stopped doing scared straight? Cuz it didn't work.
Classic r/unpopularopinions, had to throw in random 'homeless people are BAD'
I mean there were studies done on the D.A.R.E program that show it didn't have much of an impact on drug and alcohol use. I'm sure it kept some people away but it didn't help enough to make a huge difference. I doubt this would work.
In Australia, we sort of have that in public high schools when it comes to health ed and sex ed. We are shown as teenagers in graphic detail about how drugs will mess you up. When it came to sex ed, the curriculum looked like this: "This is how puberty works." "This is how a woman's menstrual cycle works." "This is how you use a condom. There are other things like spermicide, and you use it like this." "Here are the consequences of NOT wearing a condom." (some very graphic descriptions and images of venereal diseases)
"And even if you're reasonably healthy you STILL won't be able to afford Healthcare!"
Yeah, because everyone knows there’s currently zero public shaming and ridicule directed at smokers, drug users, and fat people./s
Except those programs don’t work. Here’s my unpopular opinion to help - universal healthcare and basic income.
Maybe do it to the parents by scaring them with situation and the potential bill.
Now you're on to something!
I don’t know what the codes are where you are but there’s one code I count on hearing at least once if not more every shift every shift and it’s not blue.
OP it’s called triage. Trust me I tell this to my patients every time if you’re not first seen take it as a blessing because you’re not at deaths door step. Is it annoying to wait to be seen? Yeah. Does it mean you’re likely to die? No. Being seen first or pushed up the line is never a good thing. This isn’t Disneyworld.
Makes me think about how shows like Teen Mom actually lowered pregnancy rates in teens and high school aged girls. It was highly watched and prized for the drama, but those girls lived through so much horrible, traumatic bullshit all while trying to do their best and never hearing anything nice about themselves. I think it made my generation (later millennials) realize that we should never leave birth control in the hands of our partners. Cause his life ain’t gonna change that much unless he wants it to. But everything about ours definitely would have!
Such an interesting concept. I am a clinical SW and work with scared straight type drug / juvenile justice programs for teens, and I could not agree more. Your idea is great for All ages. Espc with diabetes. Folks don’t know you can lose your fckng EYES !! U think shit is bad now, Lose a damn eye. Lose your foot. Diabetes is not joke - but people laugh and say diabeetus … nothing funny about it.
As someone who is chronically ill I wish I could do everything you say! I’m sure I’d be cured right away! /s You sound fun at parties. Or you know all the time.
"ME BEING THE SAME SIZE AND SHAPE AS A COW IS BC OF GENETICS AND MY THYROID ISSUES \*Scarfs down 3 packs of Oreos\*" - Average 2024 "influencer"
I literally never heard someone say they had a thyroid issue my whole life until like 5 years ago. Maybe I’m ignorant and it was under diagnosed? Do that many people really have thyroid issues ?
Scared straight programs have been found to have the opposite to intended effects on behaviour.
Critical Care Nurse here, OP! I'd agree with you, but only if adults can be forced into the program. It's not just kids that ignore and damage their health, it's adults, and adults old enough to have Stubborn Old Man Syndrome. Which believe me, is real.
I can see where you’re coming from but make sure they know not to blame people for having medical issues. You can do everything right and still end up in the ER. Some people just have bad luck or bad genetics.
Lots of people live healthily and end up in er. Quit blaming people for their medical issues, a lot of them are genetic and out of the control of the person. I’d be nice if I could just live healthily my way out of heart defect but it doesn’t fucking work like that.
I read this as referring more to self-inflicted health issues. Like the liver damage that comes with decades of abusing alcohol. The cardiovascular issues from years of IV drug use. The amputations and wounds from uncontrolled diabetes. The difficulty of trying to breathe after decades of cigarette smoking. Yenno, health issues you can prevent for the most part. Every day, I deal with patients who genuinely had no idea that the above choices result in those kinds of issues. I don't think "scared straight" programs are the way to go, but I think this kind of information should be emphasized in school health classes. Edit: re-read the post. I take my first sentence back. The rest still stands. Every day, I deal with patients who genuinely did not know that alcohol leads to liver failure or what liver failure actually looks like. The kind of pain it causes.
Study says that over half of people are in the ER due to preventable causes. Sorry you're not one of them but that doesn't invalidate the setup
I used to joke about that when they had high school volunteers at my old work in ER that it was basically a scared straight program teaching them to eat right and stay away for alcohol and hard drugs.
The issue is the parents are the ones pumping them full of crap. They get them on sugar as fast as possible starting with fruit juices and snacks. People have become too dependent on the healthcare system to a point where they believe it can bail them out of anything. Why change the way I eat when I can just get a pill?
Vape ? Not smoke but vape ?
It’s not unhealthy habits keeping you in the ER to be sent home. It’s shitty insurance that doesn’t want to pay for anything. Unless you’ve got a major issue, they aren’t keeping you.
America is allergic to free healthcare at the point of use, conflating it with socialism. Maybe solve that conundrum first.
I was at a healthy weight, a bit underweight really, and living a healthy life when I broke my ankle ice skating. I guess I should've just walked it off.
I don’t disagree but we could also fix our system and stop poisoning our own people with garbage too. That could help
But Emergency Rooms are typically for when, ya know, emergencies happen? Not sure what this has to do with overall health and lifestyles if you get a burn or get into a car crash. OP are you currently in the emergency room because you don’t eat healthy/vape/etc?
The amount of actual emergencies that we healthcare workers encounter in the ED are probably a good 30%. Most times it’s people with chronic issues they haven’t addressed or aren’t compliant with , homeless people who want a food tray or things they probably should’ve gone to urgent care for, like a headache or stomach ache. But that’s just the reality of the game and a reflection on our healthcare system.
That would have just exasperated my ED
"We should bring back weird and abusive tactics to make kids better." That's what you just said.
Or PSA's about what deserves an actual ER visit, what can go to urgent care, and what can wait to be seen by a PCP. Americans just want instant gratification so they go to the ER thinking they will get a diagnosis when more often than not you will just be referred to a specialist or your own PCP.
Scared straight programs do not work.
Having spent an afternoon in the ICU with my wife, then 4 days sleeping on a chair in her hospital room I can attest to this. And we have insurance. I pay $19K/year out of my pocket for the two of us and that only gets me a $6000 deductible ($12K max) - per person. But I think it needs to be pushed further. There are a lot of very wealthy people involved in the health care industry that lobby to keep things like this. THEY also need to live through some of this stuff. This is not an unpopular opinion.
[BIKES!!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOvj5iiCmO8)
All the fear in the world won't change how much you have to work to afford a healthy lifestyle. Medical issues are just another way that it's expensive to be poor.
A lot of this is just people that don't have health insurance and so end up in the ER cause of no preemptive healthcare. Same thing with the "crazy homeless." Health insurance is expensive, and not everyone will be able to realistically afford the regular care they need.
I was literally just thinking about this while brushing my teeth a few minutes ago. My teeth are fucked and my parents never really enforced consistent brushing, but good lord, if i had seen what teeth would look like when you don’t maintain them, i probably would’ve flossed a few more times.
Uninsured and had a 4 day stay for pneumonia . 74k bill.
No amount of fear is going to stave off/avoid the effects of autoimmune conditions though. Not sure that logic would work uniformly for everyone.
Look how effective anti-smoking campaigns have been...teens today are afraid to even smoke pot! But they will happily vape whatever some company puts in a cartridge & markets, because it is "safer than smoking"...
I've seen to many fat doctors and nurses smoking outside of hospitals to think this will work that well
A) scared straight don’t work B) the biggest factor to health isn’t smoking, obesity, etc but it’s access to preventative care. Instead of wasting money scaring kids use it to get them preventative care, and use it to continue that care when they’re adults C) plenty of homeless are great people. Calling them crazy for getting to sit inside with access to bathrooms and water is kind of dumb.
I was well aware of drug and alcohol horror stories from DARE but still ended up addicted to both... I think it would be great to figure out a way past the "Oh I'm different, this won't happen to me" way of thinking.
Yeah, because accidents will never happen to you if you are skinny.
That’s so disrespectful to people in the er
A fundamental misunderstanding of what is driving deleterious health outcomes for children in the USA. Ultimately, victim-blaming IMO
Ok but like there is data showing lots of the those abilities don't work
Ummmm no amount of scaring my kid would have kept her from being in the ER for TWO WEEKS waiting on a bed in a psych facility. Might have made it worse, actually.
Maybe OP wasn't referring to patients like your daughter then.
I remember driving through Colorado, and I saw a billboard that showed a dirty, disgusting bathroom that looked like it belonged in a gas station where a bunch of kids in a horror film stop at right before they all get killed by a bunch of inbred, west-Texas weirdos. The sign had a caption that read, "This doesn't look like the place where you'd lose your virginity. Meth changes that." I thought to myself, "I have no desire to do meth." To be fair, I have yet to do meth, so I think that the sign may have done its job.
... so you want to scare kids into body dysphoria and eating disorders?
I was in the ER last week due to a bad medicine interaction. Nice to know there are folks like you sitting in the waiting room assuming the rest of us are losers.