december:
quote:
confining some of these mentally ill people would help the rest of us. Some of them are dangerous or unpleasant.
Some of you normal folks are pretty disgusting yourselves.
Ambushed writes:
quote:
There must be a pact between the seriously mentally ill and society: They have a right to live among us if, and only if, they keep up with their medical regimen. If they forgo that responsibility, they forgo that right!
Actually many of us would prefer that we not have to live among you. Why don't you leave? Hmmph, I suppose that isn't practical. There really should be a pact between you people and us: You have a right to go unmolested if, and only if, you quit trying to change the way our brains work. If you forego that responsibility, we have the right to ...[insert grisly slasher-movie sound effect].
quote:
We MUST find a tolerably humane way within our legal system of enforcing such a pact. The choice would remain with the seriously mentally ill: Take your medication or abdicate your right to your physical liberty.
So are you saying that you'd be just fine with a system in which a cohort of MDs (or some other flavor of designated expert) decides who is or is not a nut, and in which all people so determined to be nuts are forced to take neuroleptic drugs? You aren't interested in any protections against being labeled in this fashion yourself? Are you really so goddam sure that you're so different from me that it could never happen to you? Are you naive enough to think that all of the MDs (or other experts) will always be relatively unbiased, culturally eclectic enough to view a wide range of human behaviors as 'normal', sociologically informed enough to distinguish between behaviors that are symptoms of situations and behaviors that are symptoms of neurological/biological circumstances?
Are you ignorant of the stats on the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses?
Are you stupid enough to think that none of this matters?
Original SDMB thread: 'Mental illness' and compulsory treatment
See my next post on this same thread
See my previous post on this same thread