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> “The more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the HSH

> “The more Mr. Spriestersbach vocalized his innocence by asserting that he is not Mr Castleberry, the more he was declared delusional and psychotic by the HSH staff and doctors and heavily medicated,” This kind of shit is why I will never again make the mistake of being fully honest with a mental health professional about suicidal ideation, unless there is radical change in how mental health emergencies are handled. Too often, the choice is between punishment (if you speak up too much) and neglect (if you shut up and do as you're told). I'd rather risk handling things myself than risk that kind of "help" again. I'm not anti-psychiatry in general, but it's become clear to me that the field has a deadly serious problem with paternalistic arrogance, and absolutely no sign I can see of being on a course to seriously reckon with it.

djd7duehrj 5y ago
See, psychiatry I trust. Psychiatry has clearer goals because it's not being lobbied by sjw types. It's psychology and it's total disregard for any scenario where information on the patient can't be trusted that I take issue with. This seems like a consequence of psychology being in this post-modern phase where being able to evaluate and verify a diagnosis is largely disregarded.
- anigbrowl 5y ago
  Psychologists don't have custodial powers.
wahern 5y ago
The man did suffer from mental health issues, which apparently is why nobody believed his protests, instead construing the protests as evidence of delusion sufficient to justify continued institutionalization. The Guardian article fails to mention this critical detail, but other articles do, at least in passing: > His sister, Vedanta Griffith, spent nearly 16 years looking for him. He moved to Hawaii with Griffith when her husband was stationed on Oahu with the Army in 2003. He moved to the Big Island and then disappeared, while suffering mental health issues, she said. https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Mistaken-identity-lands-man-in-Hawaii-mental-16361063.php https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Mistaken-identity-l... It's still unacceptable, but not quite the same story. The counterfactual would likely have had him released to the streets, continuing to suffer from mental illness. Our unreasonable, narcissistic, excessive fear of authority is why so many mentally ill are left to rot on the streets. In fact, our culture's extreme paranoia regarding these risks seems to detrimentally manifest itself in the mentally ill, such as with paranoid schizophrenics. AFAIU, schizophrenia manifests differently in different cultures, and it manifests with particular paranoia, fear, and violence in Western societies and especially the United States. In general it seems the mentally ill often reflect and act out, in an exaggerated manner, our shared cultural fears and prejudices. For example, most of the recent anti-Asian physical assaults were committed by the mentally ill. It begs the question, is it their fault or our fault collectively? Compare popular opinion surrounding the defund the police movement. Most people are willing to except the risk of police abuse, including those communities most at risk from abuse, given the benefit that the police provide. Opinions seem to shift when it comes to civil commitment, even though civil commitment abuses seem less common than police abuse. As a culture we seem to feel more vulnerable, perhaps because mental illness contradicts our cultural beliefs regarding autonomy and agency. We need to get over it. The mentally ill used to be able to rely on family and community for support. But as a society we've eviscerated if not completely destroyed those support networks. Nuclear families don't have the resources to take on that burden alone. An early consequence was a shift to mental institutions while the community looked away; but then we swung wildly in the opposite direction and just dumped them out on the streets where we can't physically look away, but can still lie to ourselves about the reasons they're there (e.g. blaming income inequality). In both cases it's a failure to face our fears head-on.
- SamPatt 5y ago
  This is some hardcore victim blaming. The man is wrongfully incarcerated and medicated against his will for years, and your response is "if people trusted authority more this wouldn't happen." What?
  - wahern 5y ago
    What happened is wrong. But the reaction, including the failure by the media to properly contextualize the incident, implying that simple denials of an erroneous identity can cause people (and the state) to institutionalize you, also reflects a harmful cultural pathology. Despite all the hand-wringing, that pathology has resulted in making civil commitment and other coercive measures for mental health treatment historically difficult and exceptionally rare, with the direct consequence that I often see in various American cities mentally ill people literally, physically rotting on the street (e.g. someone living on the street, clearly suffering from severe mental illness, with gangrenous legs due to diabetes or other disease). (In rural areas it's more hidden because housing is cheaper.) So, yeah, I think it's a serious and consequential issue. Again, the counterfactual here is the man living homeless on the street, which judging by the newspaper articles and the HN thread suggests most people were tacitly okay with--it's the status quo, afterall. That doesn't justify what happened to him; it's the reaction to the incident that is problematic--the pearl clutching, "OMG that could happen to me", "this is why we need to make it even more difficult to force treatment." IOW, this man was victimized twice, not just once. Instead of nursing our paranoia about our own largely imagined vulnerability to state coercion, people should be asking how we can create a more proactive, more dynamic system. That may mean not only more checks & balances, but a greater allocation of power to the system, not less. (To make a technical analogy, look at CI/CD, where you get better at something by exercising it more often, not by avoiding it.)
    - techbio 5y ago
      The authorities you appeal to here are evidently as delusional as this particular human canary they so confidently and cooperatively caged up. What the authorities need is competition, or else continued abuses of their monopoly are certain. A system that enables these kinds of outcomes should not be allowed to promote their services as helpful to people. One man's potential settlement check does not acquit them of their responsibilities. A system that sends people to the sidewalk and then punishes them there does not need to be fed any more, it is eating plenty on its own.

djd7duehrj 5y ago

See, psychiatry I trust. Psychiatry has clearer goals because it's not being lobbied by sjw types. It's psychology and it's total disregard for any scenario where information on the patient can't be trusted that I take issue with. This seems like a consequence of psychology being in this post-modern phase where being able to evaluate and verify a diagnosis is largely disregarded.

anigbrowl 5y ago
Psychologists don't have custodial powers.

wahern 5y ago

The man did suffer from mental health issues, which apparently is why nobody believed his protests, instead construing the protests as evidence of delusion sufficient to justify continued institutionalization. The Guardian article fails to mention this critical detail, but other articles do, at least in passing: > His sister, Vedanta Griffith, spent nearly 16 years looking for him. He moved to Hawaii with Griffith when her husband was stationed on Oahu with the Army in 2003. He moved to the Big Island and then disappeared, while suffering mental health issues, she said. https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Mistaken-identity-lands-man-in-Hawaii-mental-16361063.php https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Mistaken-identity-l... It's still unacceptable, but not quite the same story. The counterfactual would likely have had him released to the streets, continuing to suffer from mental illness. Our unreasonable, narcissistic, excessive fear of authority is why so many mentally ill are left to rot on the streets. In fact, our culture's extreme paranoia regarding these risks seems to detrimentally manifest itself in the mentally ill, such as with paranoid schizophrenics. AFAIU, schizophrenia manifests differently in different cultures, and it manifests with particular paranoia, fear, and violence in Western societies and especially the United States. In general it seems the mentally ill often reflect and act out, in an exaggerated manner, our shared cultural fears and prejudices. For example, most of the recent anti-Asian physical assaults were committed by the mentally ill. It begs the question, is it their fault or our fault collectively? Compare popular opinion surrounding the defund the police movement. Most people are willing to except the risk of police abuse, including those communities most at risk from abuse, given the benefit that the police provide. Opinions seem to shift when it comes to civil commitment, even though civil commitment abuses seem less common than police abuse. As a culture we seem to feel more vulnerable, perhaps because mental illness contradicts our cultural beliefs regarding autonomy and agency. We need to get over it. The mentally ill used to be able to rely on family and community for support. But as a society we've eviscerated if not completely destroyed those support networks. Nuclear families don't have the resources to take on that burden alone. An early consequence was a shift to mental institutions while the community looked away; but then we swung wildly in the opposite direction and just dumped them out on the streets where we can't physically look away, but can still lie to ourselves about the reasons they're there (e.g. blaming income inequality). In both cases it's a failure to face our fears head-on.

SamPatt 5y ago
This is some hardcore victim blaming. The man is wrongfully incarcerated and medicated against his will for years, and your response is "if people trusted authority more this wouldn't happen." What?
- wahern 5y ago
  What happened is wrong. But the reaction, including the failure by the media to properly contextualize the incident, implying that simple denials of an erroneous identity can cause people (and the state) to institutionalize you, also reflects a harmful cultural pathology. Despite all the hand-wringing, that pathology has resulted in making civil commitment and other coercive measures for mental health treatment historically difficult and exceptionally rare, with the direct consequence that I often see in various American cities mentally ill people literally, physically rotting on the street (e.g. someone living on the street, clearly suffering from severe mental illness, with gangrenous legs due to diabetes or other disease). (In rural areas it's more hidden because housing is cheaper.) So, yeah, I think it's a serious and consequential issue. Again, the counterfactual here is the man living homeless on the street, which judging by the newspaper articles and the HN thread suggests most people were tacitly okay with--it's the status quo, afterall. That doesn't justify what happened to him; it's the reaction to the incident that is problematic--the pearl clutching, "OMG that could happen to me", "this is why we need to make it even more difficult to force treatment." IOW, this man was victimized twice, not just once. Instead of nursing our paranoia about our own largely imagined vulnerability to state coercion, people should be asking how we can create a more proactive, more dynamic system. That may mean not only more checks & balances, but a greater allocation of power to the system, not less. (To make a technical analogy, look at CI/CD, where you get better at something by exercising it more often, not by avoiding it.)
  - techbio 5y ago
    The authorities you appeal to here are evidently as delusional as this particular human canary they so confidently and cooperatively caged up. What the authorities need is competition, or else continued abuses of their monopoly are certain. A system that enables these kinds of outcomes should not be allowed to promote their services as helpful to people. One man's potential settlement check does not acquit them of their responsibilities. A system that sends people to the sidewalk and then punishes them there does not need to be fed any more, it is eating plenty on its own.