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> you force them to get the psychiatric help that they need The problem is that there’s a long history of people labelling all sorts of things they don’t like
by chrisseaton 5y ago
> you force them to get the psychiatric help that they need
The problem is that there’s a long history of people labelling all sorts of things they don’t like as being a mental illness and using that as an excuse to use treatment as violence against them. We called homosexuality a mental illness until very recently and forced people to have violent treatment for it, for example.
- muh_gradle 5y agoIf someone is having an episode and causing violence onto other people, we're not gonna look at this 20 years later and question if this isn't a mental illness. We absolutely know what the issue is here, and the situation that I described is not unheard of.
- jawarner 5y agoGiven that causing violence onto other people is illegal, I suppose what you're talking about could be thought of as a change to the prison system so that it's designed to improve the (mental) health of people committed, rather than just being punitive.
- dcolkitt 5y agoAs an addendum, I’ll also add that the psychiatric system was the main Avenue for suppressing dissidents in the post-Brezhnev USSR.