Deprivation of liberty is permissiable if it’s subject to due process of law. See also: prison.
Habeas corpus applies to unlawful imprisonment, not any and all confinement. See also: prison.
This country doesn’t stand for the freedom of those mentally ill persons who are a threat to themselves or others to harm themselves or others, and it never has. Involuntary commitment was much easier to accomplish, and much harder to be released from, in the recent past.
Most states’ emergency commitments are for about 72 hours, but you’re not talking about the emergency commitment anymore, as that’s not what New York’s 60-day period applies to. There is no state in which the longest anyone can be involuntarily commited is 72 hours, because all states must deal with those who are dangerous and mentally ill. For instance, my state of Kentucky has a 72-hour emergency commitment procedure, and a more stringent 60-360 day procedure.
Commitment and criminal arrest have some similarities, but they cannot be subject to exactly the same procedures, because they aren’t the same thing.
Then I retort that you invented the part about “a man in a white coat”, as the 60-day commitment requires two doctors.
The hearing is after the 60 days, and periodically afterward. Also note that the two doctors are responding to an application of admission made by someone familiar with the individual, not snatching people off the streets.
And again, if you allow that schizophrenia exists and can be dangerous, how are we to deal with dangerous schizophreniacs?
Hello, I’m AHunter3 and I was diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I am not, however, a psychiatrist.
As a matter of historical fact, the branch of medical practice called “psychiatry” has, over the last 150-or-so years, often been deprived of jurisdiction over the ailments for which actual physical causes were isolated and effective treatments derived from those understandings. This was in part because Joe Average Person for whom an actual medical treatment could be provided would far far rather go to an endocrinologist or an internist or a neurologist.
And why (you may well ask) did psychiatry have a reputation such that Joe Average would recoil at the idea of going to one? Sure, the “quack” reputation played a part (but would have been ameliorated by the profession coming up with actual cures and stuff) but also the police role of psychiatry. For its entire history, psychiatry has been… let’s not call them the Thought Police, that’s too melodramatic and it isn’t your thoughts that get you locked up it’s your behavior that’s based on your thoughts, in conjunction with your emotional state… the Behavioral Police, then. Locking people up for the comfort-level and convenience of the rest of society. The removal of the disturbING, whether they themselves are disturbED, or view themselves as such, or not.
Oh, and there are no “chemical imbalances”. That’s an old theory that was never borne out by facts. Bipolar disorder is not caused by a “chemical imbalance”. Schizophrenia is not caused by one either. Neither is clinical depression. All theories of “chemical imbalance” originated in the optimistic assumption that insofar as Drug X seemed to be “fixing” Mental Disease Y, and we could study exactly what Drug X does with neurotransmitters and receptor sites in the brain and so on, it would turn out that Mental Disease Y would prove to be an excess or a shortfall of a neurotransmitter or an excess or shortfall of the uptake chemicals that soak up excess neurotransmitters or an insensitivity or oversensitivity or overabundance or shortage of receptor sites for the neurotransmitters to act on… SOMETHING like that would be found. It wasn’t. It has not. It isn’t. The psych meds adjust symptoms but not (as far as any evidence supports) by undoing or ameliorating any underlying condition directly caused by or associated with the psych disorder itself.
Doesn’t keep the psych profession or the pharmaceutical industry from continuing to promote the idea though.
Yeah, that.
Hello again. I’m part of a movement of activist schizzy-libbers, uppity mental patients and survivors of psychiatric incarceration and intervention who oppose forced treatment first and foremost.
I’m not matt357 to whom you addressed that question, but why not deal with dangerous schizzies exactly the way we deal with dangerous NON-schizzies? For everyone else, you get locked up and charged because of something THAT YOU DO, not something that some self-important pompous shrink-professional thinks you MIGHT do.
I don’t know where you stand on the whole issue of free will versus determinism but our legal system is based on personal responsibility and unless you propose to change it for everyone and start over with different assumptions, why not treat us the same way? Being crazy should not be grounds for locking us up.
If you want to try to prove one of us to be fully mentally incompetent (i.e., doesn’t know who the president is, can’t explain how to deal with having taken the wrong flight or the wrong bus and ending up in a strange town, isn’t oriented to date and time and place, can’t remember shit, can’t manage finances, etc etc) that’s a different story.
But I don’t see why anyone else’s opinion of my decision-making should have any legal weight.
I disagree with Matt357 rather strongly. My paternal grandfather was schizophrenic. I am not schizophrenic but do have
chronic depression
ADHD
Social Anxiety Disorder
General Anxiety Disorder
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
I am currently on
Lithum Carbonate
Methylphenidate
Paxil
Abilify
I’ve known many people who were clearly mentally ill.
AHunter3 I am familiar with and respect your views and arguments on mental health. Frankly, I worry that your presence here will inadvertently add credence to the OP.
What about the unassuming and humble shrink-professional?
What do we do about the man who says that he has found himself increasingly contemplating ending his life, and has been fantasizing about a plan that involves jumping off a bridge, and who isn’t at all sure that he won’t carry out that plan upon leaving your office?
How about the woman who has grown more and more depressed recently who tells you she repeatedly has fantasies that involve drowning her young children and found herself yesterday filling up the tub.
What about the guy who is planning on taking his gun in to work because he has become more certain that his coworkers are plotting to kill him - they have been bugging his phones and following him home and who have been leaving signs of their ill-intent around the office so that he is the only one who can pick up on them?
It’s well and good to suggest that the single standard should be judicial involvement for behaviors that have been committed, but there are many circumstances where the likelihood of dire outcomes grows so great that just shrugging our shoulders and waiting until behavior actually occurs is intolerable.
I notice that The Economist is currently hosting a debate on this very topic, and has a linked article too (I think it’s free to read, but requires registration :mad:).
I wish they’d put more options in the poll than “yes” and “no”.
Ah, but didn’t you read what Matt said? You don’t really have any of that. The doctors just want to make the drug companies rich. Your actual symptoms are imaginary, or normal. No, really. See, I cured you!
You don’t seem to understand. In most states they can hold you for 72 hours apon which you appear before a judge who releases you or keeps you there. In NY state they can hold you for 60 days and THEN you see a judge who releases you or keeps you there. THAT is not due process and is a violation of the right to liberty. We are granted a speedy trial by law and 60 days before you can even see a judge is a clear violation of that.
I wasn’t saying that all schizophrenics are dangerous, or that all schizophrenics should be locked up, so I’m sorry if it came off that way.
That’s the story I mean to address here. Clearly, some who are mentally ill should be commited. As there is no blood test or similar for whose these people might be, a process of short-term commitment for evaluation, subject to due process of law, is a viable way to address this problem. If you reject, as matt357 seems to, even these short-term emergency commitments, then you’re rejecting that anyone might ever be involuntarily commited.
According to the “Rights of Inpatients in New York State Office of Mental Health Psychiatric Centers” excerpt I posted earlier:
You can go before a judge before the 60 days are up.
Also, 60 days does not preclude a speedy trial. Many criminal defendents are held for longer than that (having not made bail, or denied bail) before their trials begin.
It seems like it’s always a quick trip, in these threads, from “the methods of identifying mental illness are dubious and invalid” to “involuntary commitment/compulsory treatment are wrong.”
I wonder why it seems impossible to sustain a discussion of the former? Certainly the latter is an important topic, but it is quite distinct.
Considering most people who are even CONVICTED of a crime including some felonys (chris brown comes to mind) serve far less than 60 days I would disagree with that. At the end of the day your locking them up and taking away their rights with little or no proof.
Again, you’re ignoring the difference between prison and a psychiatric facility. And yes, I know we’re not funding or supporting those the way we should.
No proof of what? We’re discussing mental health and not crimes. What kind of proof do you think should be required?
A psychiatric facility is the same or in some ways even worse than prison. In prison your allowed to go outside every day for a hour, get commissary, not forced to take medication ect.
First off, you can refuse to take your medication for any reason. Second, depending on the facility, you may get out side time each day, certainly a lot allow outside smoke breaks. Thirdly, there are a lot of different kinds and levels of facility that have each different rules, you can’t lump them all together and dismiss them as all being worse than prison, that’s just absurd.
My girlfriend would self medicate with alcohol and drugs when she went into her manic states. She would be a danger to herself and others. More than once I had to lie and tell them she was suicidal to get a 72 hour lock up. It really wasn’t a lie as she would walk out in traffic, or if she could get keys to a car she would take it and in most cases wreck it.