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Any attempt to bring back forced confinement needs to answer a basic question, which we should also apply to a lot of schemes the left dreams up: Why is it going to be different this time? A lot of people support the idea of giving the state back the power to confine the chronically mentally ill, but they are imagining that this will be done in the sort of facility that they themselves would run for, say, their loved ones. But these people are going to be confined in the sort of facility that the state would actually run.
Another question that needs to be tackled is how do you hold a person captive and still respect his rights? We throw away prisoners’ rights for the term of their sentences, and some of them for life, but they have committed a crime, and the mentally ill, by and large, have not.
Another point, as has been mentioned, is that these people do not form a constituency with any real political power. The sad thing is that if you removed the problems of homeless people ranting in the streets, and the school shooters, by and large the public would not care what had been done to those people to make the problems go away. You could implement a truly inhuman solution and it would be tolerated by the majority in exchange for making the surface-level problem disappear.
My thinking is that this is one area where the government should be involved, and it should be in terms of doing research into how to manage these diseases. If there were a technological solution, something like a slow time-release drug delivery device, coupled with remote observation or tracking of the blood levels, you could conceivably achieve the public safety goals while at the same time minimizing the boot print impressed in these citizens’ faces.
This type of thing is not as far off as you might think.
No, and I suppose it would probably end up being the cause of its own set of miseries and injustices. But you have a basic principal-agent problem in handing your loved ones over to the state, and if your state’s facility isn’t convenient, it becomes a great burden to keep an eye on them. Ideally, the monitoring would be done by the state and the family in parallel.
Son of Spengler, thanks for the post. MarciN, thanks for your comments.
If anyone wants more information about House Bill 3717, there is a ton of stuff at Congressman Murphy’s page:
http://murphy.house.gov/helpingfamiliesinmentalhealthcrisisact
I’m not so sure. All of these people have mothers and fathers. Many also have siblings, aunts and uncles, some have children, etc. When one starts adding it all up, it becomes a larger constituency than you may think.
Yup. Exactly what I’m seeing. I can’t imagine how this can work better than it did forty years ago.
But I also wonder if it will undo itself anyway. After three to six weeks on forced medication, the patient will be too lucid to confine. The doctor will release the patient, and the drugs will stay effective, for some people, as long as three months. The patient will stop taking the drugs because of the side-effects, of which there are many like weight gain, loss of energy, diabetes in many cases, and just feeling groggy. And then the decompensation will start (not always–actually, there have been cases where the person didn’t need the medication beyond the first round!), and within a year, the patient will be right back where he or she started. So I’m not sure how the Murphy Bill actions will help anyway, in the long run, in terms of keeping violent schizophrenics confined.
Yes, but the reason the lawsuits were filed on behalf of those people in confinement back in the Seventies was because all those family members handed their kin over to the state, and a lot of them never looked back. Or they felt powerless to change the conditions.
As PychLynn points out in #15, we’ve learned a lot in 40 years, through experience and research. Murphy’s bill is based on these lessons, not some abstract theory.
Not all of the bill promotes confinement. Some aspects — like relaxation of privacy laws — are so that familial support structures can function and obviate unnecessary confinement. Special mental-health courts are proposed to give patients the kind of individual advocacy they lacked under the old system.
This is not a shotgun approach to the problem. It’s not perfect, as no perfect solution exists, and there must be some tradeoffs. But it is a careful, humane, sensitive, respectful approach, an improvement over both the current system and what was in place before deinstitutionalization. If you have the time, I would encourage you to look at the link MJBubba posted at #65. It details the year’s worth of research and discussion that went into this bill.
Read Cramer’s book. The problems started 40 years ago with the de-institutionalization movement. One thing Cramer points out was that the movement argued largely from hypothetical, not actual abuses in the system.
In short, the present is worse then the previous system.
Went and read the summary, and yes, I can see why you support this. But what I mostly hear about in public discussions of this is compulsory inpatient confinement.
Treating the mentally ill has to be about more than sound bites. It is a complex issue that requires a sober response. It is clear we have moved from hospitals to homlessness and inpatient to incarceration.
I cannot see how it is better for someone to be in jail than a hospital bed, or freezing in a tent instead of in a warm, safe place.
The chronically homeless do not have the skills they need to live independently. We should try to help them live in the least restrictive location possible, like a supportive apartment, group home, or if they need it, a facility of some sort that is not jail.
The Pelosi-Barber initiative continues 100 years of Progressive policies that destroy society, waste money, kill people, and usually fail at their ostensible purpose.
Imprisonment is often used as a punishment, but it also serves the purpose of reforming, and more to the point, of protecting society. That is the purpose of the state, and confining the violent, whether criminal or mentally ill, is part of that purpose.
So I suppose every single person on meds in America is mentally ill and sbject to a lesser regime of rights than the good normal people who want to help them. It is the purpose of the state to protect society.?
Who, besides you, is arguing for that? The rest of us are talking about special cases. Not everyone on meds is likely to be violent. Part of that is the specific disease and part is the case history.
Your attempts at rational argument fall below the standard here. Maybe it works for Facebook or wherever else you hang out, but we expect better of you here than calling people sheeple and twisting what people say about special cases into generic treatment for everyone. Following your logic, a med is any medication, therefore, we are all advocating that people who take a pill for high blood pressure should be locked away. You are not making sense. All that you’ve left out from standard Internet practices is comparison to that Austrian guy.
Well, I happen to have made a post on the purpose of the state. Feel free to read it and make arguments there. (It will even open in a new window)
Who said I advocate that? Where were you when it was suggested I don’t want people treated or want dangerous people on the street? Who was here to say, who is advocating that? The question remains, why have less rights for people deemed to be mentally ill? This is a good question and there is no basis for such and if that makes no sense to you than that is your problem. I will continue to make this this point which hasn’t been refuted and can’t be refuted and saying I make no sense doesn’t refute it.
If it can’t be refuted, then what are you arguing against? There’s no reason to argue against something that can’t be refuted. I think it is irrefutable that you are wasting your time, arguing the irrefutable.
Cute, ahahahah….. Next
A child does not have full rights, because the child is assumed to lack sufficient capacity to make decisions for himself or herself. Instead, a parent exercises those rights on behalf of the child, and can limit the child’s freedom. When the parent fails in those responsibilities, the child can become a ward of the state.
Similarly, when a person hears voices, hallucinates, and otherwise suffers from mental illness that prevents him or her from making capable decisions for himself or herself, someone else needs to assume that responsibility. The person may cede that freedom to a guardian (parent, sibling, or child), but if not, the person may become a ward of the state.
Maintenance of rights requires a “sound mind” (that’s why legal documents, such as wills, may require testimony to that effect). What’s tough is that we need mechanisms to determine objectively whether a person has lost his or her capacity.
That is exactly right. It is hard to determine where to draw the line. It is easy to lock someone up if they are threatening to kill someone else. But what do we do when they refuse to take meds and live in the woods?
A child is not an arbitrary distinction like “mental illness” and enjoys Constitutional protection.
The problem there is that the medications are so variable and powerful, can cause the symptoms you mention and much
worse, are dispensed in experimental fashion, and are going obsolete continually. The question remains like all my questions here, would you act peculiar if you were dragged off and thrown in a cage by brutal thugs?
We have a mechanism for “Special Cases” and If All men are created equal, that includes the mentally ill. Not much controversy here.
Here is something worth reading. It takes the discussion from the theoretical to what I call the real world.
I encourage you to read Michael Laudor’s story in the link I included in the original post. Michael Laudor suffered without having been dragged anywhere or thrown anywhere. Can you offer any evidence of people developing symptoms only after being preemptively treated or confined?
If someone hears voices and hallucinates, is that an arbitrary distinction?
You continue to ignore case after case put forth by me and everyone else, and continue to present a single straw man argument. Clearly, you are not wanting to discuss or debate, but bang the one drum you have. You are unwilling to see any good faith in others points of view, and throw around names.
In short, you argue like a leftist.
Hey Bryan, Why ignore the principles which include all the cases?. You already said it is rare to forcibly do your business so why do need more power to do that? Do you want it to be more frequent? What is precluding you from being more effective that can’t be done by more sensible use of the means you have? Straw Man? I just said there is little controversy here and have acknowledged your good faith efforts and see no reason not to exhort the people to wake up because of what I have seen and know. No straw man here, just a man who has seen things that shouldn’t be seen.