Posts tagged Experts

Re: One Flew Over the Lone Star State

Eric Hannekan:

Hm. It sounds like he’s suggesting “mental therapy vouchers,” dispensed by a judge to those he deems mentally ill.

No, I’m suggesting that involuntary commitment be abolished, and that judges and other government officials be removed from the psychotherapeutic process entirely.

If you want to get together a voluntarily-funded charity or mutual aid society that covers the costs of psychotherapy, possibly including hospitalization in a psychiatric ward, then you should be free to do so, but one of the chief points that I’m trying to stress is that government officials and political power need to be kept as far away from psychiatry as possible.

Tacos:

One of the issues that arises in treatment of the mentally ill is that many patients have little or no insight into their own illness. You can’t expect all mentally ill people to recognize that they are even ill, much less recognize that they need to seek help.

Many people with diabetes or human papilloma virus have little or no insight into their own illness, and many may not even recognize that they are ill. Yet very few people are willing to imprison diabetics or HPV carriers and force “treatment” on them without their consent.

This might be seen as an improvement on the surface, but in reality if the patient is convinced that pyschiatrists are trying to implant a transmitter in his brain, his ability to choose between facilities might be somewhat impaired.

Ah, paternalism.

I know of some cases of people with cancer who chose to go for quack “therapies” rather than submitting to the usual regimen of treatment. Sometimes at the cost of their own lives, and often on the basis of beliefs that are no less irrational than the delusions common among certain people labeled as “schizophrenic.” Yet people who believe stupid or crazy things about magic cancer cures are not forced to undergo chemotherapy or radiation therapy against their will. If they were it would be more or less universally considered an atrocity, even if putatively forced on them “for their own good.”

What, if anything, do you think explains this difference in treatment? What, if anything, do you think justifies it?