3 ms·

There is no shortage of laws that can be used to do exactly that, and I think it's quite an extreme interpretation you put forth here. Just to name a few: * c

There is no shortage of laws that can be used to do exactly that, and I think it's quite an extreme interpretation you put forth here. Just to name a few: * conspiracy to commit a whole range of crimes, including murder * threatening people with an actual weapon * threatening people BUT this would prevent mental health "professionals" from detaining light or "highly functional" cases of things like autism and forcing "treatment" (confinement, nothing more) on them. And let's not forget that they are very much not above forcing themselves with brutal violence, locks and forced medication onto perfectly healthy patients when given the chance [1]. Nor are they above causing mental health issues in order to create themselves easy patients. [2] Or just lying. [3] (note: this is one of the centres where psychiatry was developed) Those easy but involuntary patients would be replaced, out of necessity, with people with actual mental disabilities, homeless, who need constant care, are addicted, destroy the place and/or are actually dangerous to the staff. In other words, almost exclusively patients that cannot be helped and/or are dangerous. This would destroy psychiatry. Good riddance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_psychiatry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_psychiatry [3] https://www.thelocal.ch/20190701/locked-up-for-being-different-switzerlands-dark-chapter https://www.thelocal.ch/20190701/locked-up-for-being-differe...

outlace 7y ago
Sure, but the idea is that if someone is schizophrenic and threatening people, it would be better for the patient and society if she was admitted to a psych unit and treated, and possibly able to return her life, rather than incarcerating her for some time, releasing her untreated and then the same thing happening again and now she has a criminal record. As a resident psychiatrist, I can tell you that most of the time I'm not conflicted about involuntarily admitting a patient, at my institution it happens rarely, almost all patients sign in voluntarily and can request to leave, in fact most of the time we deal with patients who actually want to get admitted and will feign symptoms to do so, forcing us to admit them. The times we involuntarily admit patients are when they are so symptomatic that they would very likely die without treatment (e.g. they refuse to eat because they think their food is poisoned). Every field has its history of controversies, that doesn't mean the field as a whole is inherently bad.
- candiodari 7y ago
  > Every field has its history of controversies, that doesn't mean the field as a whole is inherently bad. Psychiatry has gotten caught, repeatedly, at a 100% false positive rate. Think about it, from a mathematical point of view: anything significantly over 50% can only be the result of fraud. Or more specifically, declaring patients ill irrespective of the variable: the patient. Just being completely wrong will only ever get you to 50%, so let's say you might get to 55% on a particularly bad day, but anything higher is fraud. This has not happened in just 1 experiment but has been repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. In the 19th, 20th and 21st century. Furthermore actual diseases have systematically been removed from psychiatry. Everything from epilepsy, seizures, milk allergies in children (yes, really), multiple sclerosis, cancer (esp. brain tumors), various hormone imbalances, a number of parasitic infections and other "unexplained" diseases that may interfere with normal behavior (either directly, or for example by causing long-term pain. Or simply by having symptoms but being undiagnoseable (or merely undiagnosed). For example, in both cancer and multiple sclerosis patients may present with symptoms in some cases years before a test for the disease shows a positive result. In the case of cancer a test may in fact remain negative right up to the point the patient dies, diagnoses have been corrected through autopsies where it really wasn't the docter's fault. But the problem is, when referred to psychiatrists, these patients were generally diagnosed with mental illnesses, and treated, in quite a few cases right into the grave. Psychiatrists had all sorts of very convincing theories (except not really if you read them) how they were going to fix these. Needless to say, none of them were ever verified experimentally, and quite a few have been caught at outright fraud. Even Freud himself is known to have knowingly contributed to help perpetrators of rape hide their crimes by convincing women they didn't happen, and using violence when that failed. And when you read today's psychiatric theories, for example about EMDR, you know: give it 10 years, and we'll know it to be a fraud as well. Shapiro had plenty of chances, more than enough data, patients, and all the authority and places to publish she could possibly want to verify her treatment. She didn't. Not in over 2 decades. Give it 10 years, and we'll know: it's because she knows it, and herself, to be a fraud. Even if you believe that she wasn't sure, that would mean you concede that she experimented on patients for 2 decades. Any other medical practitioner would not just have been fired, they would have been convicted to decades of prison. And let's take today's favorite diagnosis Autism/ADHD/Autism Spectrum Disorder. I'm going to have to violate Godwin's law on that one. It sounds absurd, but it's true: Hans Asperger invented that ... to "justify" the large scale killing of Polish and Jewish children in "Aktion T4". Let me just provide a link because I would readily understand you not believing me [1]. This guy is revered by today's psychiatrists, for the same reason Freud was. Not, of course, because he helped people, in fact he killed far more than Dr. Mengele, but because he enabled psychiatry to grow. Even the more benign theories, like famously Taylorism, turned out to be ... a fraud. Quite simply a fraud. There is zero chance Taylor believed in his theories himself, as he paid people to lie about them. Second, clear patterns of fraud keep coming forward over time. Famously "hysteria" and, of course, running away from a slave master ("drapetomania"), getting raped, being female in general, being gay (although choosing voluntarily for prostitution is still "being treated" with the patients incarcerated. Well, only for women of course). It turns out psychiatry was only used for social control in those (many) cases. The fight against psychiatrists was an important (and now de-emphasized) part of emancipation in both cases. HIV actually manages to fall into both categories. God's punishment for being gay, with of course psychiatrists making sure some of that heavenly punishment is not just restricted to posthumous roasting. Today is different ? Let me just say "VERY unlikely". If something was true for 200 years, and there haven't been any big changes ... why would anyone believe it has changed ? And psychiatry doesn't actually help patients. This is a somewhat problematic issue that keeps popping up. In empirical studies, it keeps coming forward that many psychiatric treatments don't work better than a placebo. A great number of treatments, that are nevertheless used, are known to be far worse than doing nothing at all. There isn't a single involuntary treatment that's empirically verified better than a placebo despite more than a hundred years of searching for one. Antidepressants are famous for their incredibly bad long-term effects, yet psychiatrists keep prescribing them. Before you say "pharmacological industry", THEY label their products as having a maximum indicated usage of weeks to months. Psychiatrists and even nurses however, give them to patients for years, with disastrous effects. For children Ritalin (and Valium before it) are known to have extreme negative effects on child development with anything but extreme short term use. Valium was in fact quite exceptional in that it's long term effects were relatively benign, but it was addictive and therefore a drug. But it gave much less serious long term problems, especially compared to prozac/fluoxetin/SSRIs, what they use now. The problem with Valium was also that it was abused on a large scale, and when push comes to shove, it's similar to keeping a kid drunk for years, even if liver failure is much less likely. But of course sedation leads to serious problems if it's used for any length of time. Again, any other medical practitioner giving patients medications beyond their indicated usage with known bad effects on the patient ... would lead to jail time. It's time that the same becomes true for psychiatrists and social workers. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1

outlace 7y ago

Sure, but the idea is that if someone is schizophrenic and threatening people, it would be better for the patient and society if she was admitted to a psych unit and treated, and possibly able to return her life, rather than incarcerating her for some time, releasing her untreated and then the same thing happening again and now she has a criminal record. As a resident psychiatrist, I can tell you that most of the time I'm not conflicted about involuntarily admitting a patient, at my institution it happens rarely, almost all patients sign in voluntarily and can request to leave, in fact most of the time we deal with patients who actually want to get admitted and will feign symptoms to do so, forcing us to admit them. The times we involuntarily admit patients are when they are so symptomatic that they would very likely die without treatment (e.g. they refuse to eat because they think their food is poisoned). Every field has its history of controversies, that doesn't mean the field as a whole is inherently bad.

candiodari 7y ago
> Every field has its history of controversies, that doesn't mean the field as a whole is inherently bad. Psychiatry has gotten caught, repeatedly, at a 100% false positive rate. Think about it, from a mathematical point of view: anything significantly over 50% can only be the result of fraud. Or more specifically, declaring patients ill irrespective of the variable: the patient. Just being completely wrong will only ever get you to 50%, so let's say you might get to 55% on a particularly bad day, but anything higher is fraud. This has not happened in just 1 experiment but has been repeated, and repeated, and repeated again. In the 19th, 20th and 21st century. Furthermore actual diseases have systematically been removed from psychiatry. Everything from epilepsy, seizures, milk allergies in children (yes, really), multiple sclerosis, cancer (esp. brain tumors), various hormone imbalances, a number of parasitic infections and other "unexplained" diseases that may interfere with normal behavior (either directly, or for example by causing long-term pain. Or simply by having symptoms but being undiagnoseable (or merely undiagnosed). For example, in both cancer and multiple sclerosis patients may present with symptoms in some cases years before a test for the disease shows a positive result. In the case of cancer a test may in fact remain negative right up to the point the patient dies, diagnoses have been corrected through autopsies where it really wasn't the docter's fault. But the problem is, when referred to psychiatrists, these patients were generally diagnosed with mental illnesses, and treated, in quite a few cases right into the grave. Psychiatrists had all sorts of very convincing theories (except not really if you read them) how they were going to fix these. Needless to say, none of them were ever verified experimentally, and quite a few have been caught at outright fraud. Even Freud himself is known to have knowingly contributed to help perpetrators of rape hide their crimes by convincing women they didn't happen, and using violence when that failed. And when you read today's psychiatric theories, for example about EMDR, you know: give it 10 years, and we'll know it to be a fraud as well. Shapiro had plenty of chances, more than enough data, patients, and all the authority and places to publish she could possibly want to verify her treatment. She didn't. Not in over 2 decades. Give it 10 years, and we'll know: it's because she knows it, and herself, to be a fraud. Even if you believe that she wasn't sure, that would mean you concede that she experimented on patients for 2 decades. Any other medical practitioner would not just have been fired, they would have been convicted to decades of prison. And let's take today's favorite diagnosis Autism/ADHD/Autism Spectrum Disorder. I'm going to have to violate Godwin's law on that one. It sounds absurd, but it's true: Hans Asperger invented that ... to "justify" the large scale killing of Polish and Jewish children in "Aktion T4". Let me just provide a link because I would readily understand you not believing me [1]. This guy is revered by today's psychiatrists, for the same reason Freud was. Not, of course, because he helped people, in fact he killed far more than Dr. Mengele, but because he enabled psychiatry to grow. Even the more benign theories, like famously Taylorism, turned out to be ... a fraud. Quite simply a fraud. There is zero chance Taylor believed in his theories himself, as he paid people to lie about them. Second, clear patterns of fraud keep coming forward over time. Famously "hysteria" and, of course, running away from a slave master ("drapetomania"), getting raped, being female in general, being gay (although choosing voluntarily for prostitution is still "being treated" with the patients incarcerated. Well, only for women of course). It turns out psychiatry was only used for social control in those (many) cases. The fight against psychiatrists was an important (and now de-emphasized) part of emancipation in both cases. HIV actually manages to fall into both categories. God's punishment for being gay, with of course psychiatrists making sure some of that heavenly punishment is not just restricted to posthumous roasting. Today is different ? Let me just say "VERY unlikely". If something was true for 200 years, and there haven't been any big changes ... why would anyone believe it has changed ? And psychiatry doesn't actually help patients. This is a somewhat problematic issue that keeps popping up. In empirical studies, it keeps coming forward that many psychiatric treatments don't work better than a placebo. A great number of treatments, that are nevertheless used, are known to be far worse than doing nothing at all. There isn't a single involuntary treatment that's empirically verified better than a placebo despite more than a hundred years of searching for one. Antidepressants are famous for their incredibly bad long-term effects, yet psychiatrists keep prescribing them. Before you say "pharmacological industry", THEY label their products as having a maximum indicated usage of weeks to months. Psychiatrists and even nurses however, give them to patients for years, with disastrous effects. For children Ritalin (and Valium before it) are known to have extreme negative effects on child development with anything but extreme short term use. Valium was in fact quite exceptional in that it's long term effects were relatively benign, but it was addictive and therefore a drug. But it gave much less serious long term problems, especially compared to prozac/fluoxetin/SSRIs, what they use now. The problem with Valium was also that it was abused on a large scale, and when push comes to shove, it's similar to keeping a kid drunk for years, even if liver failure is much less likely. But of course sedation leads to serious problems if it's used for any length of time. Again, any other medical practitioner giving patients medications beyond their indicated usage with known bad effects on the patient ... would lead to jail time. It's time that the same becomes true for psychiatrists and social workers. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05112-1