A Review of the "Mental Illness" Definition Might Prevent Crime 260
An anonymous reader writes "Following a BBC report showing abnormal variation in the number of people taken into police custody with mental health problems, concerns have been raised about the legal definition of "mental illness". Prof. Steve Fuller argues that a much sharper legal distinction is required to ensure criminals with mental disorders are not released without appropriate treatment. Fuller distinguishes between two cases: a 'client', who pays a therapist and enjoys a liberal, level-playing field in face-to-face interactions, and a 'patient' who is being treated by a doctor for a particular disorder. If the former relationship cannot be established due to person's mental state, then the latter one should be enforced. Thus, Fuller calls for 'a return to institutions analogous to the asylums of the early 19th century.'"
Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Need more mental health centers not prisons with 23/7 lock down
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they easily serve the same purpose. How long until "disagreeing with the politics of the ruling party" becomes a mental illness? No, no, we're not locking up millions in prison camps, that would be fascism, we're just confining them in mental health institutions, it's really for their own good!
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
People's Cube response (Score:2)
Ah, yes, Comrade! Those of us true to the Collective have always known that the Hooligans and Reactionaries had something wrong in their heads! Probably from a vodka deficiency or something.
I, for one, welcome this! It's time we lock away all the dissidents until they learn to love Big Brother -- er, I mean, Dear Leader.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Interesting)
Probably in the same timeframe as "disagreeing with the politics of the ruling party" becoming a crime.
There is a good example - Russia has a long history of "diagnosing" dissenters with "mild schizophrenia" and similar mental conditions and "sentencing" them to be treated in special prison-like institutions. It started back in tsarist days in 19th century and lasted up until at least the late Soviet period, when a bunch of dissidents were forcefully "treated" from this. (There are also some reports it's been going on in the 90s but lately there have been no high profile cases.)
Parallels can be drawn..
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Informative)
The US wouldn't have that problem and i'll tell you why. They probably had socialized medicine and it was normal to have doctors just see someone on the government's dime. That would never happen here, lol.
Umm, "never happen here" you say, and with a laugh?
Let me cure that memory hole for you.
https://www.rutherford.org/key_cases/key_cases_brandon_raub/ [rutherford.org]
You owe me an internets. :)
Strat
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
We stopped being vigilant a long time ago. We stopped being honest citizens a long time ago. Many will sing the last line of our national anthem without a hint of irony, despite the fact that we imprison more people than any country in the world.
The crimes we need to be afraid of are not the crimes committed by people behind bars. They are the crimes committed by men in suits, in government or corporate board rooms. Most people in prison are victims, either of unjust laws, or an economy deliberately engineered to work against the common man. We need to focus on the real problem. It's not the schizophrenics on the street corner, it's the sociopaths in DC and NYC.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people in prison are victims, either of unjust laws, or an economy deliberately engineered to work against the common man.
[citation needed] times infinity. this is an extraordinary claim that is false on its face.
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At least on the federal level, it's trivial to prove (unless you're a shill for the War on Drugs):
"The most serious charge against 51 percent of [federal prison] inmates is a drug offense. Only four percent are in for robbery and only one percent are in for homicide."
(source [washingtonpost.com])
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No, because "protecting people" from their mental illness is a more sanitized, less outrageous aim, at least on the surface. If you're looking to stigmatize opposing points of view with a slow boil, it's an intermediate point. Just long enough to collect statistics "proving" that such people are often criminal, and regrettably must be incarcerated in some cases.
Disclaimer: I don't believe in some large conspiracy attempting to do this. I am afraid that certain segments really believe this, though, and would
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Interesting)
As somebody who had spent enforced two months in a mental ward after being conned into "self-admittance" (and later threatened with being shipped to a state institution unless I signed another set of papers claiming I committed myself voluntarily), I'd say the current system already needs rework.
My family was told outright by one of the orderlies that because I had no insurance, I'd be kept for a while because that's they way the hospital gets money from the government (via Medicare).
My "doctor" did everything possible to launch me into an anger spiral that would help them keep me locked up for a longer time. I was not the only one - I personally witnessed how they set up a young guy that came in through the emergency room after drunk drug overdose (at a party) - he did snap after being lied to and promised to be released on several occurrences (I witnessed two of those firsthand, being nearby - the place was that small), and when I finally fought my way out of there he had already been shipped to state "mental institution."
From what I heard, that meant at least six months of being locked in.
My "doctor" did nothing whatsoever to even pretend he cared for his patients. All were prescribed a cocktail of medications (with varying side effects), and that was it. No counseling, no sessions. My "welfare worker," the person supposedly assigned to protect the patients, was fully cooperating to keep me in (overheard their exchange waiting for the first and only "interview" I had with both of them).
I got out because a member of my family knew somebody wealthy and connected enough to start causing problems for the "doctor" in charge. Otherwise I might as well have still been confined, for all I know.
In the end, I declared bankruptcy rather than have them get around $34,000 of taxpayers' money for my "treatment." Consisting of involuntary confinement to a small shared room with two beds, two night-tables, a small bathroom, one corridor, and a TV room. If not for the books my family brought over, I'd probably go insane from boredom alone.
I was merely an incidental victim. Somebody being thrown into that system on purpose would have even worse chances of getting out unscathed (if that's what I did). There was an article recently about New York policeman who ended up in a mental ward after speaking out about criminal behavior in his division.
So, no. You are already there, it's just that few people realize it.
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Even if you're voluntarily committed you should be able to leave at any time but if they force you to
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
You do realize that until the 60's, the U.S. had a fair number of asylums. Then it was determined that the mentally ill had rights and they were promptly discharged with many finding the street life fit them better than anything else. It turned out the mentally ill had a right to be homeless.
What is needed is a more sane approach to mental illness, especially now with so many vets suffering from PTSD. The discrimination should stop, but for that to stop people would need to be educated about mental illness....well, I guess the mentally ill are screwed then.
The prisons are filled with people that simply run into the law enforcement system before they run into a mental health system. The law enforcement system cannot force one onto meds, so the poor souls get warehoused in the prisons. When they are let out, their neuroses are that much worse because mental illness frequently does not get better on its own. Left untreated, it gets worse. By that time, the mentally ill think of prison as a refuge, so they commit another crime to back.
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Then it was determined that the mentally ill had rights and they were promptly discharged with many finding the street life fit them better than anything else. It turned out the mentally ill had a right to be homeless.
The USA operates on a policy of Social Darwinism because anything else would be pinko-commie.
If you're ill and or poor in the USA, the sacred Market will remove you from the human race if you are not sufficiently fit.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Many of the asylums were horrible and without hope, due to longstanding medical orders for which there was no effective treatment. The advent of effective psychopharmacology changed that: people with bipolar depression, for example, devastating post-traumatic stress based depression,, devastating post-trautmatic stress, and numerous other problems became treatable and could be treated as outpatients or with short stays to stabilize their medication, then released. Care really did improve in the 1960's and early 1970's, when the psychoactive medications were better understood and seized upon with great joy by doctors and patients who'd before felt quite hopeless. Unfortunately, this became coupled with cost-saving "return to the community" programs and policies, and we wound up with _enormous_ numbers of ill people who could not safely live on their own, turned out without structure to remember to take their medication by themselves.
The results have been predictable: numerous confused, somewhat insane people were left without the help they needed because their smaller, modern, fragmented families could not possibly fill in the gap of providing residential care. When coupled with the strain on the prison systems from the "war on drugs", the threshold for providing residential care has been raised so high that facilities willing to work with modest mental disorders have been overwhelmed by even more profound cases, an. And the quality of care for both has dropped, harshly.
I'm afraid that I'm old enough to know relatives and colleagues with such members. When their need for treatment leads them to self-medicate with illegal drugs, they then wind up snared in the "war on drugs" and "zero tolerance" policies, and become even more difficult to help.
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Well, when you think about it what causes people to be in prison are behavior problems, and the reason that mental problems are, well, problems, is because they tend to cause behavior problems.
I think that better treatment for mental problems is part of the solution. Most people in the US have health plans that don't cover much treatment for mental problems. If you see a psychiatrist chances are that you're going to pay more out of pocket, and be limited to so many visits/etc. If you're an airline pilot
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The point is that we should be focusing on treatment, not punishment. There's also the extremely problematic aspect that people with mental illnesses may be less-able to defend themselves in court.
My primary concern with the way this was stated, however, is that many poorer people won't have access to mental health treatment, so they may be treated in the court system as if they have no mental illness. That is a serious problem. Honestly, I think we should just decide that medical treatment (whether ment
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, they easily serve the same purpose. How long until "disagreeing with the politics of the ruling party" becomes a mental illness?
Considering during the 5ish years there's been a slew of attacks on people who "don't fit their world view" including pseudoscience like papers? It's already happening, funny thing about that most of them are attacks on conservatives or the tea party. Though there have been a few on liberals as well, all in all? It's exactly what every dictatorship does, you don't have to search far to find it.
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No, no, we're not locking up millions in prison camps, that would be fascism
That would be any oppressive totalitarian regime. The ideology is just the window-dressing necessary for getting into power.
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If the government is willing to pony up the dollars to support the entire "crazy population" (and again, crazy because they don't agree with politicians) then I'll be
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Informative)
How long until "disagreeing with the politics of the ruling party" becomes a mental illness?
Perhaps, but more likely is how long before we start lowering the threshold for which someone requires "help". Especially if the facilities were private, which is 99% certain these days.
In 2008 in Pennsylvania two judges were convicted of accepting bribes from Robert Mericle, who owned private youth detention facilities. In return, they would sentence kids to incarceration in his facilities for such heinous crimes as shoplifting a DVD from Wal-Mart, trespassing, or in one case making a video on Myspace mocking the principle of a school.
Considering that mental health is so subjective and still poorly understood, could you imagine the amount of abuse that would occur? I would measure in seconds the time between such a facility opening and doctors being bribed to incarcerate patients, "for their own good".
This is a problem which has become endemic in private prisons. When it becomes profitable to incarcerate someone, the last real barrier to simply incarcerating anyone deemed undesirable is removed.
It has been long argued that drug laws in the US are mainly only used to convict unemployed, poor and predominantly black men in large cities, for whom there are few prospects and no jobs. With meth, this has extended to white people in the same position, in the same way opium laws did to the Chinese in the past.
How long before a new system of mental health facilities serve precisely the same purpose?
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Considering that mental health is so subjective and still poorly understood, could you imagine the amount of abuse that would occur? I would measure in seconds the time between such a facility opening and doctors being bribed to incarcerate patients, "for their own good".
We don't need imagine, there is plenty of evidence that there was a great deal of abuse where the old system of institutionalization was concerned. That is one of the reasons society decided to dismantle that system in the 60's. This was the height of the "great society" after all its not as if the objection to the state "caring" for the mentally ill was on anit-socialwelfare spending grounds.
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How long until "disagreeing with the politics of the ruling party" becomes a mental illness?
Perhaps, but more likely is how long before we start lowering the threshold for which someone requires "help". Especially if the facilities were private, which is 99% certain these days.
In 2008 in Pennsylvania two judges were convicted of accepting bribes from Robert Mericle, who owned private youth detention facilities. In return, they would sentence kids to incarceration in his facilities
The invisible hand of the free market in action! Too bad anyone who claims to see said hand will be declared insane.
But the concern is real. The underlying evil in for profit prisons and for profit mental incarceration is that a publicly held corporation must show increased profit on a regular basis.
The only way to increase profit is to either lower costs or increase the people who are the "product", so that the customer pays more.
There are finite limits to decreasing costs. There is already a large p
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Admitting that you have a problem [wikipedia.org] is the first step to recovery.
Does the US actually need such excuses? I was under the impression that "tough on crime" was a fad nowadays, so you could probably get more political points by stressing how bad they have it in "pound-me-in-the-ass" prisons. And those attitudes are unlikely to soften since economy
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Being able to go to the doctor whenever you are sick without having to do a cost benefit analysis first.
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That's an impossible fantasy - since healthcare resources are not infinite, rationing must happen somewhere. The open issue is: who does the cost-benefit analysis? Both history and basic economic theory say the person most affected usually has the best information to make that call. Healthcare is less obvious, because sometimes you're unable to make the decision precisely because of the condition you need help for. Even so, the consumer should be the one making that cost-benefit analysis wherever practi
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Even so, the consumer should be the one making that cost-benefit analysis wherever practical, and where not the doctor is perhaps the best choice - never the government ruling from afar, deciding what's best for the peons.
i absolutely agree that the consumer should be doing the cost benefit analysis. the problem is that our current healthcare system is so horribly broken that this is impossible. neither the patient nor the doctor know the true cost of whatever services that are done and medications that are prescribed. So the only costs that the consumer is optimizing against is the portion of costs passed through by the insurance.
I think the best model is the Kaiser Permanente HMO of managed care. The doctors are all employ
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When I get hungry I go to the grocery store. I don't have to wonder whether I can afford to do it, or keep thousands of dollars in reserve. Normal doctor's visits are a different discussion than care that's quite expensive because of limited facilities, equipment, or skilled experts. In the latter case, someone is making the rationing decisions. If it's your doctor, behind the scenes, that's still quite close to the decision being made. OTOH, there were discussions after the London riots about strippin
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what do you think mandated health care is really about?
It means you can now get a prescription for your tinfoil hat.
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Who was the last president that didn't do that?
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Some mental health centers can be compared to prisons, with similar lock downs. Once admitted to a mental health facitlity, it can be harder to get out of than prison. And, depending on your location and health insurance coverage, they can be very easy to get stuck in.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
The trouble with mental health is that there isn't any kind of magic bullet treatment like there can be with just about any other disease.
Usually the best treatments come from medication, and if the person stops taking their medication (this is very often the case, they think they don't need it anymore, especially due to the stigma attached to it which often makes them WANT to stop taking it) then they go back to how they were before, only this time going back on the medication doesn't solve the problem and the psychologist has to keep trying different medications until one works, assuming they can ever find one.
Or they can also come from therapy (depends on the exact condition) and if you keep them in these places until they are "treated", it may as well be a prison sentence. I've seen these places, they very much remind me of a prison: The windows are barred, the doors are all locked and only visitors and/or staff are allowed through them, and visitors can't bring plastic or metal inside. The patients are forced to sit around doing nothing all day long, maybe get to play backgammon with some derp who was born without a personality, or if they're lucky he'll be a nut and somewhat entertaining to talk to.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Insightful)
"The trouble with mental health is that there isn't any kind of magic bullet treatment like there can be with just about any other disease."
There's almost never a magic bullet treatment, for any disease, mental or physical. The problem with mental illness is that it diminishes the sufferer's ability to make decisions for himself. That doesn't mesh well with a society of individuals.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
It's exacerbated by a society that doesn't take it seriously.
No, really, no one takes the fact you have a mental illness seriously until you do something completely batshit crazy like shoot up a school. If I had a nickel for every time someone told me I didn't have a reason to feel depressed...
You are ignored, basically, until you commit a crime. THEN people care. Until then you're not ill, you're just a lazy loafer.
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You are ignored, basically, until you commit a crime. THEN people care. Until then you're not ill, you're just a lazy loafer.
And after, you're a dangerous criminal who must be punished.
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having someone declared mentally ill was a good way of getting rid of them back in the 19th century.
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But we are in general, much more successful in treatment of 'physical' conditions rather than 'mental' (See what I did there? I artificially made a distinction where there really isn't one.) With some of the new techniques and knowledge in neurobiology we are getting closer (although this has been said many times before).
The problem then becomes do you really want to go there? It is easy to imagine a period of time in the not to distant future when medical science understands cognition and emotion well e
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to disagree... If I get strep or pneumonia, they give me a z-pack and bam, it magically goes away. If I have a broken finger, they give me vicodin and bam, I magically don't care about the pain (though yes, the finger itself just takes time to heal). If I have insomnia, they give me ambien and bam, I can magically sleep again. When my knees or hips eventually wear out, they give me new ones and bam, I magically get to walk for another 20-30 years. And keep in mind that many of our "magic bullets" work on a larger scale and longer term scale - Vaccination, water sterilization, sewage treatment, annual physicals, etc.
Even for the things that still tend to kill us, like cancer and heart disease, we have a lot of magic bullets that let us live far, far longer than we would have a century ago. Case in point, we wouldn't have various religiots arguing over their "right" to murder (as in the case from last week) their 10YO daughter by refusing treatment for a 95% survivable form of leukemia. She would simply have died, no moral issues involved.
But for mental diseases, it gets a lot messier. There, I would have to at least partially agree with you. We have plenty of ammo, but precious few we would dare call "magically" effective. Perhaps more like "napalm", where they might get the job done, but with so much collateral damage that you have people going off their meds because the cure sucks almost as much as the symptoms (to give my metaphors a good stir there).
Perhaps more to the point of TFA, I would have to agree with its author. We need to get over this societal PC BS that every sociopath and drooler can, with the right care, grow up and lead a productive life as a rocket surgeon. Some people will never manage more than wiping their own ass, and some people will never grasp why they can't "earn" their living pointing a gun at convenience store clerks. Simple as that. Best for us, and best for them, to keep them off the streets until such time as we can cure "criminal" with a magic bullet - Preferably starting the process before they take a real bullet from an armed victim or a cop or a partner crossed.
Great response (Score:2, Informative)
I have to disagree... If I get strep or pneumonia, they give me a z-pack and bam, it magically goes away. If I have a broken finger, they give me vicodin and bam, I magically don't care about the pain (though yes, the finger itself just takes time to heal). If I have insomnia, they give me ambien and bam, I can magically sleep again. When my knees or hips eventually wear out, they give me new ones and bam, I magically get to walk for another 20-30 years. And keep in mind that many of our "magic bullets" work on a larger scale and longer term scale - Vaccination, water sterilization, sewage treatment, annual physicals, etc.
Wow - great response. Thanks for that!
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Wow I'm modded troll for talking frankly about mental health. I guess that kind of goes to show you just how seriously we take it at least. Even talking about it lands you scorn.
I have experience with it because two of my relatives have been through it (I have literally more than 50 first cousins btw, or at least that's where I stopped counting, and I don't need to talk about probabilities) and it's pretty damn stupid how the system works, at least in the states anyways.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Insightful)
This is about false diagnosis used as a shadow justice system for malcontents, and bringing back torture and abuse.
we're not talking about people who actually need help. we are talking about people who are about to be rammed through the system because the system wants them gone, without too much of a fuss if they were ordinary criminals
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There is this psychiatric issue called transference [wikipedia.org]. (In this case the third definition) that may be operative here. I sometimes wonder exactly what kind of childhood the majority of Slashdot moderators had. Kinda scary.
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Pulling those people out of poverty should help a lot (as it does with a lot of illnesses).
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Right. Just put half of the population either into mental health centers or in prisons.
That will save you from thinking about why you've got so many criminals and people who are nuts.
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Need more mental health centers not prisons (Score:4, Insightful)
mental health centers ARE prisons.
They are calling for a return of the bad old days of 19th century asylums.
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The trouble is we can't usually tell the difference between someone who is "a little off" and someone who is likely to be a real danger. The mental health professionals are little better at it than lay people (running schools etc) but not all that much. If we really value the freedom to be an individual still at all than we can't even entertain the idea of going back to the way things were.
The problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Who decides, what they can compel, and how that person's life is managed while they're institutionalized are all very, very important factors in if it's even possible to use involuntary medical-based confinement or not.
And that doesn't even begin to address costs. While I don't care for it, it's possible for prisons to get some return on their costs by using prison labor to do things that don't really pay the prisoners but do pay the prison. If someone's committed for what's supposed to be a mental illness problem, it's doubtful that using that person for profit for the institution would really be possible.
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Generally, society gives a free pass to antisocial / psychopathic behavior until and unless it passes some artificial boundary. That boundary is flexible and varies from place to place and time to time. In our present culture, pyschopathic tendencies are in fact generously rewarded in many instances (politics, business) and it actually takes a serious transgression (axe murderer) to get nailed.
Of course, the big problem here is that personality disorders and actual mental illnesses exist along a complex,
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According to RTFA, the courts would decide. The guy is talking about convicted criminals.
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First you get "convicted" of running a stop sign, then a judge orders a psychiatric evaluation where its determined you need to be locked away indefinitely without appeal.
The system was abused before and certainly would be again now more than ever in fact. In days gone by people just did not go poking the noses about and asking questions. These days eve if someone sees blatant abuse staring them in the face they won't speak out and why would they given how we treat whistle blowers.
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There are numerous examples of countercultures throughout our fairly recent history that were investigated by the authorities, and it was bad enough without those people having to particularly worry about involuntary confinement attributed to supposed mental illness.
I think this is the big problem. Lots of people imagine asylums being used to lock up political opponents, but that's not terrifically likely in a way that I would worry about. In short, if one political party has enough power to simply lock up political opponents, then they're going to do that somehow or another. Issues of cost, as well as issues of whether the system would actually benefit the mentally ill, are less of a fundamental concern-- they're both bound up in how well the system is executed rat
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Seriously... you need to turn off the TV, turn off the radio, and the Internet for awhile. Go camping or something, just get away from the self-force-feeding of so much negativity.
Once a criminal, "ill" for life (Score:2, Interesting)
It is my understanding that you get punished once for being a criminal. With a so called diagnosis associated with you for whatever reason, sensible or not, that type of personal information probably be used against you for life.
Foundation question (Score:5, Interesting)
Apropos of nothing, let me ask a question.
Can people be cured of mental health problems?
I recall a study comparing the rates of people getting off drugs while on psychotherapy with those getting off drugs on their own.
I also recall a study where completely sane people were checked into a mental institution (under a false name, as a test case) with instructions to pretend symptoms for awhile, but then pretend to be completely cured. Their status was never set to "cured", rather it was "condition, under remission".
So have there been any studies showing that mental health treatment is effective, or is psychotherapy more akin to lie detectors and phrenology?
(A related question, is there good sensitivity between the various mental health diagnoses with different treatments? Meaning, if the condition A treatment is different from condition B, is there a sharp, easily-recognized distinction between the symptoms for A and B?)
Re:Foundation question (Score:5, Insightful)
I, unfortunately, have had far too much exposure to the mental health system, due to mental illness in my immediate family. I'll give you my perspective on your questions, based primarily on my anecdotal experience, plus some research-based discussions with practitioners.
I think the answer is a qualified yes, people can be made better, though "cured" may be too strong.
Mental health treatment is, I think, much where medicine was shortly after the discovery of the germ theory of disease. It's beginning to become a capable, scientific endeavor, and it is very useful within the areas that it works, but there's lots we don't understand, about what goes wrong, about why it goes wrong, about what will and won't work to fix it, and even about why the stuff that does work, works.
My daughter's condition is a good example. She has Borderline Personality Disorder (which is a really terrible, inaccurate name, and everyone knows it, but that's the label that got stuck on it). There is no cure but time; most BPD sufferers eventually achieve fairly normal functioning by their mid 30s. There are some treatments that help, though. Sometimes. The best one is a particular form of psychotherapy called Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which is at root mindfulness training. It's effectiveness is definitely better than nothing, but whether or not it will help a person become a functional member of society is very hit or miss. My daughter's doing okay, but has real challenges.
My sister's son, on the other hand, has Bipolar Disorder. There are great meds that almost completely fix the problem for a large percentage of sufferers, including him. In addition, it appears that specific dietary restrictions can do just as much as the meds. I understand that schizophrenia is eminently treatable with medication, though the severe side effects often discourage its use.
I have ADD, and so do all three of my sons. There are very effective medications for it, but there are also learned habits that can be used to work around it. My older sons and I use the latter plus a little self-medication with caffeine. My youngest takes Concerta.
Depending on the disorder, sometime diagnoses are clear and incontrovertible, and proof of "cure" (or management) is equally incontrovertible. Sometimes it's really fuzzy. Sometimes treatment is effective and well-understood. Sometimes it isn't.
The answer, I think, is to be very clear about what we can and cannot do, and to do what we can. And, of course, to continue research into improving our ability to understand and treat.
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>Mental health treatment is, I think, much where medicine was shortly *before* the discovery of the germ theory of disease fixed that for you
No, you broke it. I think we actually do understand some of the fundamental mechanisms. Not all of them, and not in great depth, but we're beyond the stage of mysticism and humors, and there is a scientific basis for much of what is done.
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There's a base assumption at play here that makes the addressing the issue at hand much more murkier than it should be.
Psychiatry sees all mental health problems as, in root, organic in nature. In other words, there is a chemical imbalance, a brain trauma, or a genetic component that creates the symptoms. These mental health issues can be seen as "cured" through medical regimes, but, many other illnesses, considered under remission, since a chemical imbalance caused by a genetic component cannot be "cured".
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However, there was such an experiment done in the 1970's and the result was much as he described: Rosenhan Experiment [wikipedia.org]
Who's hurting who? (Score:3)
I've read that statistically, schizophrenics are more likely to be victims of violence, from people who misunderstand their behavior (stand your ground *cough*) than to commit violence...
So, who should be locked up?
(too early in the damn morning to try and look up a cite.)
Re:Who's hurting who? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm a schizophrenic who has repeatedly been a victim of violence. However, as far as I know, it has nothing to do with people not understanding my behavior, and more to do with the situations I've gotten myself into, such as mental hospitals and group homes. It's been my observation that most of the people who work in those types of places want to help, but some see it as a means to exert power, sometimes violent, over others and get away with it.
This raises a question they try to avoid (Score:5, Interesting)
Are we responsible for the crimes we commit? If we are mentally ill, then surely we're not responsible. And if we're not responsible, then surely we need to have another "protected class" of people defined to prevent harassment, discrimination and unjust punishment. What they are attempting to do is reduce and even remove freedoms and rights which are both natural and constitutionally guaranteed. I'm not going to say that mentally unstable people should have access to dangerous things such as cars, knives, heavy bludgeoning devices and especially not firearms. If someone is indeed a "danger to society" we need to be serious about it -- very serious and very consistent. To deny someone their rights such as the right to self defense while at the same time not affording them appropriate protections under the law to compensate creates an extremely unfair situation.
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I've known people who were mentally ill, but completely aware of right vs wrong. Whether they'd DO wrong depended on how they saw it impacting themselves.
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Knowing if something is right or wrong at the right time is key and is truly the issue with impulse control disorders. Typically this arises in no small part due to prioritization of feelings versus facts. Rage is a feeling. Perceived danger is a fact. One of these situation may call for the use of a firearm while the other does not. So which sort of mental disorder is also a matter which warrants scrutiny.
What you describe is someone making a reasoned decision of some sort. And you know, by that defi
Good response (Score:2)
Good response, brilliant insight. Thanks for that!
Massive potential for abuse? (Score:2)
In other news (Score:4, Informative)
I do not think that having mental problems in Great Britain is a good idea: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2516270/Pregnant-woman-unborn-baby-girl-forcibly-removed-caesarean-social-workers-obtain-court-order-suffered-mental-breakdown.html [dailymail.co.uk]
They've sent her to the hospital, drugged her, cut her baby out of her and gave away the baby of this italian mother for adoption in the UK because even though she is on medication and made a full recovery she might one day have mental problems again. The baby will not even grow up in italy.
Just wow.
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They refused to give the child to other members of her family because they were not related by blood. Interesting point of view. And they did send her back to italy but are giving the child free for adoption in UK. No matter the circumstances, this is not acceptable under no circumstances. They are taking the child out of his culture and are forcing it to live in a fascist surveillance state with no more human rights left whatsoever. It is bad enough as it is in continental europe, but Oceania?
She was there
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_adoption_in_the_United_Kingdom [wikipedia.org] Nuff said. "Think about the children!!!" justifies anything.
Like preventing adults from viewing porn without having to register as a pervert by british authorities first. And of course now they extend these laws to any inconvenient webcontent whatsoever. The Guardian left its co.uk domain because of the pressure of the fascist government reigning in the UK.
But all is well. My government wants to become one of the five eyes to spy on other co
Prevent crimes? What about justice? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Preventing" crimes is not justice. Locking up innocents to "prevent" them from committing crimes is essentially the opposite of justice.
Also, note what they're preventing: "crimes". Not violence or any action that harms anyone. "Crimes" encompasses all manner of disobedience toward authority, regardless of whether that authority is legitimate. Example: Man faces felony charge over trimming shrubs [utsandiego.com]. Not a crime: DEA locks up a student, forgets about him for 4 days with no food or water [nydailynews.com].
I'd agree but... (Score:2)
I'd agree if the old Asylum system hadn't be abused in such horrific ways in the past. The exact same thing would happen again. I think the one thing we've learned from our current system is that people with mental illness can usually lead happy productive lives. There's even growing evidence that the "voices" schizophrenics hear are actually beneficial for them (their psyche is trying to express itself) and our forced treatment and mistreatment of those afflicted does far more harm than good. We need to fi
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I would say that OP went a bit far. The voices by themselves aren't necessarily a problem. However, when a compulsion to obey goes with them or where the voices cause significant distress, they must be addressed.
Did anyone read the article itself? (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, on /. we don't need to. But it seems to me that the point that the Fuller appears to be making is that the current environment (presumably in the UK where he practices) is that a very large number of people are diagnosed with "mental illness" which is fine if they are continuing to be largely functional, seeing a therapist of their choosing, etc. The problem is that when someone is arrested the question of "mental illness" has two different dimensions ... is the person legally responsible for their actions (the legal dimension) vs. is the person undergoing treatment (or has ever undergone treatment).
People who are not responsible for their actions are a tiny minority. But IF someone has been identified as not responsible for their actions, why are they left roaming the streets? That isn't fair to them or to society.
Admittedly, there is always the question of "who is to say" and that begs the question to appropriate due process (clearly, it shouldn't just be some random doctor or family member has nominated them for commitment). And clearly there were abuses in the past. I don't think Fuller is the first to notice that the current situation is arguably worse (fraction of homeless people who are seriously ill ... of course, that begs the question of whether their mental condition caused the homelessness or the other way around :).
I'm far from sure that I agree with Fuller, but the vast majority of the comments seem to be missing his core argument.
medical model (Score:4, Insightful)
Watch out for caffeine (Score:5, Interesting)
Being arrested makes you a criminal? (Score:2)
Just because you get arrested and taken to the police station does NOT make you a criminal. Being convicted of a crime is what makes you a criminal. So far the summary is just plain wrong and makes me wonder if the article is any better.
The police arrest a lot of people that they end up letting go, whether or not charges are brought up against them later. None of those people are criminals, unless they have been previously convicted of a crime.
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okay, either I am seeing shit, or someone fixed that shit, because the summary say nothing about criminals.
fuck, maybe i should go back to bed.
An ex-convict's view.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone with major mental illness who also spent time in gaol for a heinous crime, this is a terribly thorny issue. Due to the trend of "community based care", many patients stuff up their meds, and so end up committing crimes. As there is a lack of proper care facilities, we end up incarcerated in prison. This is a hell of a scary place for anyone, let alone someone with mental illness. Prison Mental Health is a joke, as it concentrates on the use of Seroquel for behaviour management, and there is absolutely no focus on life skills or therapy. Furthemore, prison officers are not mental health nurses, yet in the facility I was incarcerated in, about 2/3 of inmates were on psych meds.
In many respects, the old 19th century model of asylums (i.e. secured hospitals) could well be a better way to reduce recidivism, and to help patients learn to manage their disease and life. Prison certainly doesn't help - I came out more unstable than when I went in, as well as being traumatised by the rapes, stabbings and suicides.
Yes, prison is a consequence of action, but for those who commit a crime when unwell, but fail the test for diminished responsibility (it can be hard to prove you didn't know you were doing wrong, let alone deal with how you might know that society/law judges your actions wrong, but due to delusional thinking you think you're justified in your actions) it usually only makes things much worse. Hence the suicide rate in prison and amongst parolees.
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I've been saying for some time that asylums would be a good way to help some people.
Case in point: a neighbour of mine is so damaged that he won't ever be able to properly take care of himself. Even with some sort of future tech that could switch off his schizophrenia, he is still so damaged that he'd never be able to feed or wash himself properly. He is terribly depressed due to loneliness, which has him bring home people who are not particularly pleasant. The trouble he brings home is often cause for p
These asylums already exist (Score:2)
They are called Banks
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Plus there was that Canadian citizen who was blocked from air travel through a US airport (wasn't even stopping in the US) just because Canadian law enforcement had passed on to US Customs and Border Protection information about an mental illness related interaction she had with the Canadian police.
There's some deep issues here.
Re:Does Slashdot (Score:4, Insightful)
Until it is you being put away, Mr. Coward.
Talking about "put away" ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, rebels without a clue that should be put away
... of the many (former )criminals in the West that have been released back to the society, some of them were released solely based on the political reasons ~ such as they were of the "under privileged group" and so on
And once they were released back to the society they commit crimes again, and again, and again
Although I've been an American citizen for more than 3 decades, as a person whose origin was not from the Western nation, I can NOT understand why on earth the Western society is more willing to put m
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Because not everyone who is charged with a crime is actually guilty, and (at least in theory) we generally feel that it's better to let 100 guilty parties go free than convict a single innocent person.
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It can cut both ways. (Score:2)
On one hand, as you say, criminals could exploit a wider definition of insanity to get a lighter sentence, on the other hand, authorities can use it to incarcerate troublemakers without having to take them to a court, because they obviously need treatment for their "sluggish schizofrenia".
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Your argument is that authorities want to imprison crazy people and that is a bad thing?
If someone is dangerously insane... that is... given to violence or criminal behavior due to their insanity, then it is in the public interest that they be restrained lest they continue to act in a criminal fashion disrupting the peace.
If someone is not dangerously insane then why should the authorities care if they are in jail or not? They pose no threat and cause no disturbance. What point is there to putting them in j
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Careful. The legal definition of insanity is in place to prevent people from exploiting the definition to get away with crimes.
The definition is largely "do you know that what you did was wrong."...
"Well, not wrong. Illegal, sure, but not wrong in any moral sense."
Now what?
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Do you honestly think that an effective counter argument? Really?
In the context of a court, right and wrong is legal and illegal.
So they are a distinction without meaning in this instance.
Your move.
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The definition is largely "do you know that what you did was wrong."
A very large number of people in prison are there for things that every thinking person knows are not wrong.
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Just like everything else involving the State, they have their own legal redefinition of the words "right" and "wrong", in order to make sure things like morality or logic don't get in the way of convicting people. M'Naghten rules [wikipedia.org].
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Well then lets just define legal and illegal as "whatever you think or feel at the moment"... what could possibly go wrong?
Obviously we need laws that are static and not subject to the whims of any person at any time whenever convenient.
If you're saying we have too many laws or that we've made a lot of things illegal that shouldn't be illegal... then I totally agree with you. But the problem is that laws are passed through a political process and many of the political factions like those laws.
Our current sy
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The definition is largely "do you know that what you did was wrong."... So if a talking banana told you to do it, it doesn't really matter. You knew it was wrong and chose to do it anyway. You should have ignored the talking banana.
"I did ignore it, but then it produced a National Security letter saying I had to do it and that I wasn't allowed to tell anybody."
"I see. Case dismissed."
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Try that in court... it should be fun.
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That flies in the face of hundreds of years of law and right into the bizarro world of zero tolerance.
Say someone puts a tiny baggie of pot in your car ( or it just falls from their pocket. You had no idea it was there at all. Doesn't matter, that'll be a year for you. You possessed it and your state of mind (total unawareness of it) is no excuse.