@stgermain posted the best one earlier: How the Elderly Lose Their Rights | The New Yorker
I think it was part of the basis for I Care A Lot. The only unrealistic aspect of that movie was the ending.
I think that is one of the ones I read.
Because some people have no family members. As far as social services, they can get tied up in bureaucratic morass. If I have been elderly Mrs. Jones’ next door neighbor and friend for thirty years and want to take care of her, including her money and medical decisions, then perhaps that is best for everyone concerned.
And remember, it isn’t just fill out a form and off you go. A judge has to agree to it after a presentation where Mrs. Jones’ best interests are considered.
Sure, but my mother’s next door neighbor with whom she’s been feuding for 30 years can petition for guardianship of my mother. And maybe my mother actually needs a guardian* - but if she does in fact need a guardian , is the judge going to believe her when she says that she and Carolyn have been feuding for so long that neither of them remembers why or will the judge believe Carolyn, who is saying they’ve been friends for thirty years?
Read the New Yorker article linked above- the Norths had a daughter and this still happened
A stocky woman with shiny black hair introduced herself as April Parks, the owner of the company A Private Professional Guardian. She was accompanied by three colleagues, who didn’t give their names. Parks told the Norths that she had an order from the Clark County Family Court to “remove” them from their home. She would be taking them to an assisted-living facility. “Go and gather your things,” she said.
* hypothetically - she doesn’t need one
If you’re in that situation then you would be able to prove that you were already involved in her life to the extent that you could be considered a de facto family member.
The Las Vegas cases were of a complete stranger literally going to court about people she’d never met, and she was not the only one doing it - it was a huge industry, and it’s still happening.
It pretty much was fill in a form and off you go.
Some states probably make it more difficult, possibly to the extent that people who really need conservatorship didn’t get it. But Nevada made it really, really easy.
In a major development, Britney Spears has been allowed to hire a lawyer.
This is the real issue. I expect most of us would be familiar with Rosenhan experiments showing just how subjective and inaccurate is diagnosis of mental illness, and how easily one becomes “pigeonholed” once one receives a diagnosis, and how hard that is to shake off.
The reality is a huge percentage of us do moronic or weird things from time to time and it doesn’t matter, until you are hit with the “mentally ill” tattoo on your forehead, and suddenly every moronic and weird thing you do becomes confirmation of the diagnosis.
That is why Spears is screwed.
She can get an independent psychological evaluation. I’d do it but nobody has invited me.
ETA: as has been mentioned, a psychiatric diagnosis per se isn’t grounds for reducing a person’s rights.
Even worse than that: As Rosenhan documented, once you get that “mentally ill” tattoo on your forehead, even the perfectly normal and everyday things you do (that pretty much anybody or everybody does) becomes confirmation of the diagnosis.
Like many, I’m skeptical that Ms. Spears needs to be conserved. However, one thing that jumped out from her statements to the court, which made me at least the tiniest bit sympathetic to her lawyers, was her resistance to being evaluated. Once you’ve been conserved, getting an expert to say you don’t need it anymore seems like the obvious way to get out of it. I’m also sympathetic to her, of course, and why she’d be reluctant to let yet another person wield that kind of power over her. But I imagine anyone trying to help her navigate the legal system to regain her freedom might find her a tad frustrating to work with.
Huh. I had never heard of them – or if I had, I don’t remember them – and I even took several psychology courses in college (was briefly a psych major). Thanks for the link. Fascinating study!
Illogical as this is from one perspective, I can understand why. She’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t.
I expect it’s very stressful and distressing to undergo an examination in which no matter what you do there is a fair chance you will be written up as being nuts.
“The subject - who hides behind the name ‘Esprise_Me’ for reasons they couldn’t rationally explain - uses a cat hiding under a bed as an avatar. Perhaps indicating a certain neurotic disposition…”
Certainly were I in her shoes, I would not want to be evaluated for the reasons you’ve given. Her reasons are more than understandable and, I would argue, rational.
Reminds me of that woman who was held in a psychiatric unit for claiming that Obama followed her on Twitter, that she owned a BMW and was a banker. He did, she did, and she was.
Her lawsuit failed, but it sounds really dodgy to me, like there’s a presumption of insanity, with anything she did backing it up. It’d be pretty easy to find actions in most people’s lives that make them seem insane, even if they’re just having a bad day.
Science fiction writer Samuel “Chip” Delany, who is black, described not being believed when he told a psychiatrist that he was a published author, which he was.
So, you’re saying that if you are sane, you would not submit to an evaluation to prove you were sane, because doing so would be crazy. That’s some catch, that Catch 22.
Yep. Look at the Rosenhan experiments linked to above.
Especially if people already thought I am insane, and I weren’t, I wouldn’t trust the tests to definitively state I was sane. (It’s not the same as your train of logic — it’s just that it’s rational to be skeptical that it would prove anything. So what’s the point? I similarly would not submit to a lie detector test even if telling the truth, for similar reasons.)
A clinical interview is as accurate at testing and very good at spotting sanity.
I still sure as hell wouldn’t trust it and submit myself to it were I in her position.
Perhaps not, but I could name 50 local psychologists who would give her a fair and useful evaluation. My training program required a full year psych assessment practicum. Britney probably should be assessed by a forensic psychologist who specializes in adult competency.