Ramaswamy Claims ‘Faith-Based Approaches’ Are ‘Better Ways’ to Treat Mental Illness Than Medication
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said mental illness may be best treated using “faith-based approaches” as opposed to pharmaceuticals.
Appearing on Monday’s Jesse Watters Primetime, Ramaswamy advocated for institutionalizing some mentally ill people – even when doing so is against their will.
“Are you, as president, Vivek, going to bring back mental institutions?” Jesse Watters asked, even though such institutions still exist.
“I think that this is a clear path to fighting the violent crime wave across this country, Jesse,” Ramaswamy replied. “I’ve said it at the debates. I’m the only candidate in either party talking about it because it’s a taboo subject. But we have to talk about the hard truth. Violent crime has risen over precisely the period we have shuttered these psychiatric institutions. And you know what? The number one psychiatric institution today is jail. It’s prison. And they don’t do a very good job. And now you then get the calls to clear the jails or to have commuting of sentences or shortening of sentences. People leave those jails in a worse psychiatric condition, often, than when they even entered.”
The candidate’s eminently reasonable view that prisons are terrible places for the mentally ill then gave way to a take about getting such patients off psychiatric medication and on a treatment regimen grounded in religion.
“Why do you think it’s taboo to talk about institutionalizing people that are dangerous to themselves and others?” Watters asked.
“Well, the reality is there were some abuses, limited cases of abuses in decades past,” he replied. “We can do this again learning from past mistakes without those abuses. I don’t think I want to be pumping psychiatric institutions with pharmaceuticals into people. Faith-based approaches – there are better ways to do this. But that being said – and you put your finger on this a little bit, Jesse – is look at who benefited from that policy. It was none other than large pharmaceutical companies that had developed antipsychotics and other forms of antidepressants.”
Ramaswamy made his fortune in part as a portfolio manager for a hedge fund that was heavily invested in the pharmaceutical industry. He also founded a pharmaceutical company called Roivant Science.
Like all non-Donald Trump candidates in the Republican field, Ramaswamy is way behind in the polls.
Watch above via Fox News.
