I saw this coming years and years ago when I first got into therapy. I noticed that there were many people that really hated it that I could walk out the door of a mental health clinic and choose not to come back. Somehow, I could just tell that one day there would be a push to change that. As more and more of these shootings happened, and people said, The shooter had a history of mental illness...., I started to see all the signs fall into place. And now, were here. People are actually talking about, and there already is a law in place, but seldom used, that can force mental health patients into treatment. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to see that this is a huge breach of personal rights. The thing is, its easy to see how this kind of thing is well-intentioned. People feel that the mentally ill cant make good judgements for themselves, so someone must be allowed to override their poor thinking ability and decide for them, right? As one mental health professional put it, a person with cancer can decide to refuse treatment and die, and as long as they do so quietly, no one seems to mind. Why do we feel we have the right to take that decision making ability away from people who simply have a slightly different type of illness? Sadly, the hysteria over these shooting incidents has become out of control, and we really dont have a precedent to help us put it into perspective in any way that would be helpful. It all just seems strange, new, and frightening. Where we would normally look to elders or experts for answers, there just doesnt seem to be a lot of answers. The answers weve been given are that guns are the problem, or that crazy people are the problem. Guns dont operate themselves, so even extreme advocates for gun control have to admit that theres a little something extra to this picture. Guns didnt get invented in the last few decades. Weve had them ever since weve been a nation, but the mass shootings and random shootings by strangers have only recently become a common theme. However, its fairly common knowledge that mental disorders of many types have been on the rise in the past few decades. Some of this is due to population explosions, and some factors havent been determined for sure, but it seems fairly obvious that this is a fact. We also know that within the last 45 years the way we treat mental illness has changed drastically, and that weve also tended to spend less government funds on the subject as a whole. All this makes it way too easy to say, lets separate the crazy among us, and make sure they take their meds, see their psychs, keep them safe over there from the rest of us. Sounds like a good idea, in theory. In reality, this has been done before, and it always gets misused. First, the people who are able to decide that youre incompetent enough to be forced into things without your consent are a small community of people. If someone didnt like you politically, for example, it would be easy to get that small group of people to produce some paperwork that says youre mentally incapable of determining reality for yourself and you must have decisions made for you. If anyone were to say that they think youre just fine, well, they will just produce a psych doc that says youre being deceived and dont have the medical expertise to diagnose, and thats that. It used to be that sometimes spouses, usually husbands, would have their wives declared insane so that they could get rid of them without having them killed. People with unpopular political opinions would sometimes sadly turn out to be a mental case and would have to be committed indefinitely. The trumped up reasons for declaring people insane were numerous. Gay men and lesbian women were often locked up and subjected to torturous, treatments, under the idea that they were diseased in the mind. Secondly, even if we are dealing with people that are correctly diagnosed, and not being thrown into, treatment merely as a method of silencing, even people with mental health issues have rights. Such persons have the right to choose or refuse treatment as much as the next person. Its a fallacy to believe that every person with a mental disorder, or even half, or even a quarter of the mentally ill population of the country are dangerous or are going to do something tragic and newsworthy some day. It just isnt true. Its so easy to color ones vision of people who suffer from mental disorders that way when pretty much every person reportedly doing these things is said to have some kind of disorder or checkered mental past. Easy to do, but so inaccurate. If people get scared, or start living by mottos about how if forcing treatment, Saves lives, its worth it...., it becomes like a wide-scale version of the grade-school days when one kid littered or messed up the restrooms and didnt own up to it and everyone had to clean the football field or sit quietly instead of participating in music class. Except, its a lot worse. In this case, thousands of people will be forced to pay for the violent acts of some, and they will be stigmatized, and treated as though they are violent offenders, when they are just merely sick, because people will not be able to see the difference. Even if a treatment really isnt right for someone, they will be stuck with it. It could be causing them to have side-effects that make it difficult to think clearly, remember things, or even behave like themselves, but if its law, what can they do? Their right to choose not to take a medication may be lost. Sometimes, therapists and psychiatrists are abusive. Most arent, but there are some, and its very difficult to catch them in the act because they are often alone with patients that feel vulnerable in their presence. How would patients with abusive counselors or psychs ever be heard if theyre being compelled to visit these offices by law? Nobody likes to hear about somebody with a gun shooting innocent people in public places or institutions. We all want this stopped. I dont think anybody feels like this is an unimportant subject. Its just that its too important to make sure that we dont let emotion and despair drive us to do things that wont be good for humanity in the long run. Whatever we do today, we have to remember the effects of those actions for the next generations to come, up to the next seven generations. And, while at first glance, it may be easy to say to ones self that this is about us, the sane people, against them, the crazies; nothing is ever so simple. npr.org/blogs/health/2014/05/29/316851872/the-divide-over-involuntary-mental-health-treatment
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 03:31:20 +0000
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