True. You will note that this is one specific alternative I offered Hunter in post #212…
If it’s perfectly legal to walk around consumed by delusion, what rationale would be used to remove the children? It’s a parent’s right to raise and care for their children as they see fit, right? Personal freedom and all?
Waiting until someone does something permanently damaging before a reaction is required seems very much like a trap. For everyone concerned. I do not believe prison is the best place for mentally ill people. I do not believe all mental institutions are as horrible as the few bad examples that tarnish the whole concept.
As just one point of reference, mental hospitals are put in place to help the patient. (Regardless of how “perfect” they are or are not.) Prisons are most emphatically not.
True. You will note that this is one specific alternative I offered Hunter in post #212…
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Good catch, both of you. Yeah :smack: get those kids out of there.
Too late, you missed the call. The kids have been dead through your inaction for many hours now.
Not as easy as it looks, is it?
The father called, looking for you. He was rather angry and caustic and insufficiently appreciative of all that you did for his children.
If the first thing that happens is the state takes away the kids, who would ever tell anyone they were having frightening thoughts? :dubious:
If incarceration is torture, what is it when someone takes away your kids and won’t allow you to see them? Remember, you insist you’re perfectly within your rights to be delusional, but what if your delusion tells you the kids are being harmed by their foster family?
Things paranoid and delusional people say cannot be taken at face value. That should be blatantly obvious. My ex-wife would go into screaming crying delusional martyrdom binges because of the look on someone’s face (that had nothing to do with her), or her believing they said something they didn’t, or just shit that happened in her dreams or in her own head.
No, you don’t really have the right to your delusions when they impact others.
Read that link again-it wasn’t just herself she harmed.
And I do.
Read that link again-it wasn’t just herself she harmed.
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You aren’t reading my post the way I intended it. Let me restate it for clarification:
It’s sad but that’s what you (the person who made the decision, in this case me) “get” (i.e., must live with as the consequences of your decision) when you opt for people’s freedom over people’s safety from themselves.
In other words I would be haunted for the rest of my life by the outcome of my decision, knowing that those children had been killed by the person I had opted not to commit. But I do still think it’s the right decision to have made, in that situation, overall, lacking a crystal ball.
Let me ask you, though: if this woman is prosecuted for killing her children, do you feel she should have the right to plead not guilty by reason of insanity? Because that’s the other side of the coin. You say (and I agree, to a great extent) that people should only lose their freedom when they break laws. But that implies that if they do break laws, they must face the appropriate punishment. With rights come responsibilities. Do you feel it’s fair to allow people to assert diminished capacity only when it is in their favor?
When facing serious criminal charges (conceivably even including the death enalty), when would a dimished capactiy plea NOT be in their favor?
But I do still think it’s the right decision to have made, in that situation, overall, lacking a crystal ball.
And yet, still lacking a crystal ball, you agreed the children should have been taken from her. Seems to screw up your “because we can’t predict” rationale.
That’s my point. The law says that people have rights to certain freedoms, but those rights always go hand-in-hand with responsibilities, including the responsibility to receive punishment for one’s actions. If someone abdicates that responsibility on the basis that they are (or were) not in control of their actions, then they must also surrender their freedom over their actions. And since someone cannot just declare themselves to have diminished capacity, since we allow a third party to make that determination when it is in their favor, then we also have the right to make that determination when it is *not *in their favor, as in the case of an involuntary hold.
Another thing that strikes me as strange about AHunter3’s position is the apparent belief that from the mother’s point of view, having her children taken away is not as bad as being involuntarily committed.
Maybe I’m missing something, but it seems inconsistent (or something) to be so adamantly against involuntary commitment, but to be so cavalier about the curtailment of parental rights.
Also, I think someone mentioned in an earlier post that there are likely lurkers on this thread who have lost family members to suicide, and who are appalled by AHunter3’s views. For the record, that is true; I am one of those lurkers.
Very good point. I think it’s also worth considering the harm to the children. While it’s undoubtely hard to see your mom involuntarily held, it’s got to be bucketloads worse to be taken away from your mom AND dad and be involuntarily held by well meaning strangers in a foster home.
Hell, no.
I am not saying I embrace the entire philosophy of the criminal justice system (I don’t), but I want a “one standard for everyone” approach. Mitigating circumstances exist for everyone, and the mental state of anyone who does anything violent or destructive had to have played a major role in their commission of their deed.
What we do, when we authenticate the notion of “not guilty by reason of insanity”, is separate the world of alleged offenders into “people who caused their own behavior and should be held accountable for it” and “people whose behavior was caused by things other than themselves and should not be held accountable for it”. That’s a distinction that’s philosophically very difficult to defend. (See this board’s own interminable threads on “free will” for example).
Taking temporary custody of her children does not imprison her.
Unless you’re arguing that we should consult with the children and not put them in someone else’s hands without their consent (a reasonable objection but not, I think, what you were driving at), I don’t see what this has to do with the discussion of involuntary commitment.
Well, the apparent motivation for taking the kids is “something’s not right with this woman, I’d better put her kids in protective custody lest something bad happen”.
Earlier, your rationale for **not **putting her on a hold was, in part at least, the ‘we can’t predict dangerousness’ issue. Isn’t saying the kids should be put into custody an admission on your part that there *are *times we can foresee a greater liklihood of danger?
Of course, putting the kids in protective custody is essentially imprisoning them, as well, but no, that is not my point. Your inconsistent logic is my point. By ageeing ‘the kids should be taken’ you fatally undermined your ‘we can’t predict’ point. You are trying to have it both ways.
Different standards for differently invasive outcomes. There is, for example, a world of difference between “employers not be able to passively discriminate against schizophrenics, hence if any organization can be shown to employ a lower percentage of schizophrenics than exist in the population at large, we hit them with a discrimination charge and impose a human resources overseer to correct their pattern”, at one extreme, and “all schizophrenics will be rounded up and executed as undesirables” at the other extreme.
Both are ways of treating (or not treating) schizophrenics differently. It’s massively more invasive of human rights to round people up as a category and kill them than to exercise a hiring preference that has the net effect of making people in that category less likely to be employed.
The motivation for taking the kids is that the kids might be at risk. We (as a culture) might take someone’s kids (temporarily) if we had reason to suspect that the parent was addicted to illegal drugs and was neglecting them. We would not (without charging the parent with a specific crime, giving the opportunity to confront and refute the charges etc) lock the parent up.
Are you going to take custody of her friends, her coworkers, and anyone else she might be giving a ride to when she next tries to kill herself?
Sorry, the point stands. You can’t have both "The motivation for taking the kids is that the kids **might be **at risk. We (as a culture) might take someone’s kids (temporarily) if we had reason to suspect that the parent was addicted to illegal drugs and was neglecting them. " AND use ‘lacking a crystal ball, I do nothing’.
Either we can
(1) have reasonable suspicions, and act upon them, or we are
(2) incapable of having reasonable suspicion.
You need to pick one. You let the mom go in my hypothetical because you (B) lacked a crystal ball, remember. Later, you said you should have taken the kids, apparently because you (A) saw something in the crystal ball.
After you pick one, then you can argue the nuances of which is the worse action, taking the kids or hospitalizing the mom.