I worked on a crisis line about 23 years ago in Seattle. We were taught to listen for signs that the caller was “a danger to self or to others.” We were also taught that the system would only intervene in the worst cases and would try very hard to work with the person and their family to enter treatment voluntarily if that was the most appropriate course.
I can’t vouch for what really happened once the Mental Health Professionals got involved, but I got the impression that involuntary treatment was the exception, not the norm.
And, no, I don’t have statistics to back my anecdote.
It’s certainly the exception to the norm. But it’s based on what someone might do, and that was my point: that makes it an exception to the rule that we incarcerate people for what they did do. Didn’t mean to hijack the thread though: my real point was that the ‘evil dangerous psycho’ legend serves a social function, the function of legitimating involuntary incarceration. Our liberation movement has been fighting forced treatment in an organized manner* since the 1970s and this is the pervasive community fear that we’re always up against, not the only problematic attitude but certainly one of the big ones.
actually the phrase “herding kittens” comes to mind quite often. but we do have marches & rallies, meet with policy-makers, try to do public education, etc, and we do have local regional national & international orgs
It’s not just the news media that perpetuates the stereotype that schizophrenic=dangerous. Try checking out your “procedural dramas.” Just right off hand, I can think of 2 eps of CSI, several of CSI:NY and a bunch of Criminal Minds (not surprisingly), and that’s just the series I happen to watch.
By contrast, when was the last time you saw someone on a TV show who was a stable, competent person who just happened to have mental health issues?(I’d love to see one of these programs address the cost of the medicine that allows such people to be competent and symptom-free). Or one that did show a schizophrenic as a victim
I also completely agree with AHunter :
I tend to make people very uncomfortable by stating, in public, that I have bipolar disorder. It’s as if I were announcing to the world that I have an STD! Really, it’s a lot more like asthma - a chronic illness caused by multiple factors, which can be harmful if left untreated but is almost always controllable with treatment and lifestyle changes. I’m very upfront about my condition, because how can we, as “mental health consumers” get rid of the stereotypes if we, ourselves, act like it’s something to be ashamed of?
My stepmother, 20 years ago, was horribly and forever maimed by a woman who was convinced that the CIA was using mind-control lasers to alter her thoughts.
Sometimes the apeshit nutzo folks really are just that.
And, just because ONE incident from twenty years ago (and most probably not schizophrenic at all - looks more like paranoid), you thinks that ALL schizophrenic are violent?
You know, thousands of people are maimed every year by completely sane and healthy people.
No, I just meant that the apeshit nutzo woman who knowingly ran her truck off the road onto the sidewalk while my father and my stepmother were walking along said sidewalk, pinning her against a bank and severing one of her legs while she was also impailed by the trucks’ hood ornament, might have been in fact not a well-adapted or healthy member of society. And not someone I’d like to hang out with.