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>Do you consider people with an acute neurosis the same way? Would you shun your sister if she had a sudden mental breakdown and believed to hear voices? This

by xoa 4y ago

>Do you consider people with an acute neurosis the same way? Would you shun your sister if she had a sudden mental breakdown and believed to hear voices? This doesn't seem like an honest analogy. The legal/social concern here isn't about the individual, it's about their effect on others, and the extent to which it is willful negligence of something treatable. If someone has a known, treatable mental disorder and, repeatedly, refuses to follow the treatment and then engages in wilful behavior endangering others then yes that can absolutely be an issue. A better example would be epilepsy: in much of the world people with it cannot drive (or are restricted in license type/conditions, no Class C for example), because the accident rate for drivers with epilepsy is over double the baseline. They're not bad people obviously. And my understanding is that just in the last few years some very promising new medications have had studies showing significant improvements without side effects. So perhaps under those treatments it'd be fine for them to drive. But if someone with epilepsy knew they did, refused treatment, lied about it, got a commercial license and then started side swiping people with a semi, then yes they'd be "shunned" (dealt with). It's the "dangerous" qualifier in OP's post that is the big issue.

luckylion 4y ago
Darius McCollum [0] comes to mind. Clearly he might endanger people with his stunts, but just as clearly it's because of his mental illness. If someone refuses treatment for a fatal illness, isn't that a clear sign of mental illness to you? To me, that's barely different from "God talked to me through my dog's poop and commanded me to poison my neighbor". Yes, clearly you don't want neither the TB-spreader nor the Poisoner running around doing their thing. But is jail the approach you'd go for? I'd call those cases more crazy than criminal. A psych hospital would be a much better approach imho. Granted, they can look a lot like jails, but maybe that's something that could be changed instead of just using jail as a one-size-fits-all thing. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum

by xoa 4y ago

luckylion 4y ago

Darius McCollum [0] comes to mind. Clearly he might endanger people with his stunts, but just as clearly it's because of his mental illness. If someone refuses treatment for a fatal illness, isn't that a clear sign of mental illness to you? To me, that's barely different from "God talked to me through my dog's poop and commanded me to poison my neighbor". Yes, clearly you don't want neither the TB-spreader nor the Poisoner running around doing their thing. But is jail the approach you'd go for? I'd call those cases more crazy than criminal. A psych hospital would be a much better approach imho. Granted, they can look a lot like jails, but maybe that's something that could be changed instead of just using jail as a one-size-fits-all thing. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_McCollum