On 2005-05-13 21:03:00, Paul wrote:
"You got all the facts and current
trends correct.
Thanks for posting from first hand
experience.
The anti-pychiatry crowd will just
dismiss you as an anomoly.
That is sad, obviously.
I appreciate you stating it like it
is, those on the list who are seeking
the truth will appreciate your honesty.
The anti-psychiatrist will just keep
on hurting those that need help ..."
I understand the terrible fear people who are not mentally ill have for being locked up, adjudged mentally ill, and (they think) forced onto psychoactive drugs.
And for a teen placed in a program, forced drugging is a real fear. For adults, it's paranoia. You *can* refuse the drugs even if you're loony as a toon and they can't make you take them.
This is why I like the SPECT scanning technology. It provides powerful objective evidence that, while not conclusive, can give people who are not mentally ill a tool for arguing against an involuntary commitment. I think anyone being involuntarily committed should be able to demand a SPECT scan.
On the other side of it, there are an awful lot of people out there who believe they aren't mentally ill when they really are.
There are way more non-mentally-ill people petrified of being labeled mentally ill, but among those of us who *do* have mental illnesses, there are many who firmly believe they don't.
Again, a SPECT scan, while not absolutely conclusive, provides some hard evidence that can support or refute what the doctor is saying.
Also, which areas of the brain are abnormal--and in what ways--matter to potential for aggressive, unwarranted violence. Even someone with a mental illness, armed with a SPECT scan, may be able to successfully make the case that they are not dangerous.
Anybody is *capable* of violence---look at any parent defending her child. The kicker is whether or not you're prone to irrationally initiating acts of violence yourself.
Personally, I'd allow the patient to decline the offer of a SPECT scan and challenge his/her commitment without it if he/she chose, but allow him/her to insist on and have a right to the scan if he/she wanted one.
But it's really hard to get people who aren't mentally ill to believe that if you scan their brain, their brain really is different from yours.
Which is one reason why those of us who *are* mentally ill are always running into people who think we could "suck it up" and "rise above it" if we "really wanted to." Or that we could "learn how to compensate for it."
Nothing you say can convince them that the doctors could tell you in advance what my brain would look like--general pattern--if you took me off my meds and scanned me, and what *their* brain would look like if you scanned them, and that the two pictures would be very, very different.
They just don't believe it.
Even not being mentally ill doesn't protect someone from having some irrational fears.
It's rational for kids to fear bad psychology and bad psychiatry being involuntarily foisted on them. That *is* happening.
When it's non-mentally ill adults fearing it, it's a *genuine* fear, but not a rational one.
Now, if anyone here has grounds to worry about ending up in the hands of bad psychiatry, it would be me---or any of us who are actually mentally ill. *I* have rational grounds to be concerned that if I ended up in government custody somehow, some goombah might misdiagnose me and *deprive* me of the very necessary meds that keep me sane, and then blame me for whatever I did in an unstable state---or worse, put me in a situation, out of my mind, where I could kill myself or someone else.
It's a lot easier for a pernicious government to find an excuse take someone's meds away, than to force them down someone else's throat.
My meds just make me, about many things, more stable than a whole lot of people whose eccentricities don't rise to the level of actual mental illness. Not "normal" exactly--there are some effects and damage from my illness that they just don't have treatments for yet, like the executive function problems.
But I don't tend to see conspiracies everywhere and jump at shadows.
Unfortunately, most eccentric people think they're normal. They don't realize they're missing maybe half a card in their deck. I don't think government should *do* anything about that, but it does mean that some people's fears about some things aren't real amenable to reason.
Ginger, I'm not talking about you. With what you went through, you have every reason to be a bit jumpy. I do think that since the 80's, with the improvements of various meds, it's gotten a whole lot easier to contest an involuntary commitment. As an adult, even a young one, you could not get court ordered to a facility for a couple of years now. (Maybe before you were 21 in a few states, but more probably not). They have to give you your own lawyer, and because of the new meds *anybody* can make a case, by being lucid in the hearing, that someplace that can't stabilize you for release within 3 weeks isn't trying very hard.
You guys have no idea how hard parents of seriously mentally ill and seriously unstable children have to fight to get hospitals and such to *keep* their kids longer than that. It can take longer to get someone newly diagnosed stable on the right medication because you usually have to try a couple before you get one that fits and isn't giving that patient problems with side effects.
Over on the boards for parents with bipolar kids, it's pretty much a given that after your kid turns 18, if he/she isn't stable, or believe's he/she isn't sick and won't take meds, there's not a blasted thing you can do about it. The sad bit is that that gets kids who can't survive independently kicked out of their homes because they're dangerous and violent to the parents and the younger children. Which is partly how new homeless mentally ill happen.
Because of the advances, it's a lot easier for a person who's not seriously mentally ill, or even one who is, to fight an involuntary commitment now.
For one thing, since very, very few real mentally ill folks have to be doped to the gills to be stabilized, if you produce someone for a hearing and they're drooling and have a vacant stare, the people arguing *for* the commitment have some serious 'splainin' to do. And the judge is far more likely to be very skeptical than credulous.
Improvements in treatments have made it *very* hard to credibly claim that drugging someone to zombiehood is anything but a ploy to limit their ability to contest the commitment.
And if they drug you with stuff to make you act dippy at the hearing, it's easy enough to say so, request your blood be drawn immediately and analyzed by a totally independent lab, and they are soooo busted. At which point the judge will be pissed and they'll have to produce you *off* meds if you request it--and the judge will *check*.
It's a lot harder than it used to be to lock someone up on a bogus claim of them being nuts.
I'm not saying it can't happen, just that instead of rolling a six-sided die, you're more like rolling a hundred-sided die with maybe five chances in a hundred that, if you contest the commitment and *aren't* dangerously mentally ill, you'll get wrongly committed.
If you're an *adult*.
Involuntary psychiatry for kids really is primitive as hell, and that's why I'm trying to bring the protections up to adult standards.
I think a kid that wants to contest a commitment ought to get a completely independent guardian ad litem, not mom and dad, to represent his case that he *shouldn't* be committed.
But most other average people, them not much interested in the issue but okay to discuss it if the subject comes up, have a case of the vapors if I even suggest it.
Timoclea