At one point should society forcibly treat insane people? Here are some scenarios. Imagine that forcing the insane person to take medicine would restore him to "normal".
(1) homeless and doesn't bathe
(2) eating garbage
(3) living in a cardboard box
(4) not using birth control and not taking care of the resulting children
(5) encouraging others to follow this lifestyle
(6) encouraging children of his/her followers to follow this lifestyle
(7) starting a new religion with himself as the messiah
(8) plans to sacrifice himself/herself
(9) plans to sacrifice his/her followers
When does it become appropriate to force a person to take medicine to become "normal"?
At one point should society forcibly treat insane people? Here are some scenarios. Imagine that forcing the insane person to take medicine would restore him to "normal".
(1) homeless and doesn't bathe
(2) eating garbage
(3) living in a cardboard box
(4) not using birth control and not taking care of the resulting children
(5) encouraging others to follow this lifestyle
(6) encouraging children of his/her followers to follow this lifestyle
(7) starting a new religion with himself as the messiah
(8) plans to sacrifice himself/herself
(9) plans to sacrifice his/her followers
When does it become appropriate to force a person to take medicine to become "normal"?
We do and we don't. In the US, people could be locked-up in mental hospitals. Then there was a reaction to poor conditions, so we decided to let the mentally ill fend for themselves as homeless people. Mostly the homeless only harm themselves, so we think that this policy is preferable to forcing them to take medication and supervising their lives. I don't know if that is truly human treatment.
On the other extreme, you have the USSR where people could be diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia if they became interested in Buddhism, Christianity, or whatever. They would be medicated until they were cured.
Most founders of religions showed signs of mental illness, but they became the guides to generations of followers. Should the government have stepped in and treated these people forcibly?
We do and we don't. In the US, people could be locked-up in mental hospitals. Then there was a reaction to poor conditions, so we decided to let the mentally ill fend for themselves as homeless people. Mostly the homeless only harm themselves, so we think that this policy is preferable to forcing them to take medication and supervising their lives. I don't know if that is truly human treatment.
On the other extreme, you have the USSR where people could be diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia if they became interested in Buddhism, Christianity, or whatever. They would be medicated until they were cured.
Most founders of religions showed signs of mental illness, but they became the guides to generations of followers. Should the government have stepped in and treated these people forcibly?
Trouble is one man's homeless person is another man's urban outdoorsman. I think you have touched on the problem; what some may consider restrictive mental illness may just be eccentricity freely displayed. Thin line between the two.
At one point should society forcibly treat insane people? Here are some scenarios. Imagine that forcing the insane person to take medicine would restore him to "normal".
(1) homeless and doesn't bathe
(2) eating garbage
(3) living in a cardboard box
(4) not using birth control and not taking care of the resulting children
(5) encouraging others to follow this lifestyle
(6) encouraging children of his/her followers to follow this lifestyle
(7) starting a new religion with himself as the messiah
(8) plans to sacrifice himself/herself
(9) plans to sacrifice his/her followers
When does it become appropriate to force a person to take medicine to become "normal"?
Some thoughts....
- #1 thru #3 could just be poverty.
- #4 thru #6 are legal, albeit bad ideas.
- #7 is something I might try.
- #8 is indeed bonkers, but a person's right.
- #9 justifies imprisonment/treatment.
Never. And as far as I'm aware, this is not practiced in my country with the possible exception of parents "forcing" their children to take medications because their children don't have the power or rights to do otherwise.
What about a person who refuses to take antidepressants and as a result is unproductive at work (maybe even collecting unemployment or on disability), grouchy, negative, and generally unpleasant? Wouldn't it be justifiable to force that person to take antidepressants if it would really make him/her a better and more productive person?
Never. And as far as I'm aware, this is not practiced in my country with the possible exception of parents "forcing" their children to take medications because their children don't have the power or rights to do otherwise.
In the US, I believe it is fairly easy to force medication on mentally ill when they become a nuisance. A judge must issue a court order to put the person in a mental hospital. If the person refuses medication, then it is time for the infamous "booty shot".
In Germany you can draw up a patient’s decree stating you refuse to be treated with neuroleptics, but the flipside of the coin is that you may stay placed in hospital for virtually forever. If no decree has been drawn then a judge decides how long you must stay in placement “until you are no danger anymore for yourself and others”. In those cases the forced administration of neuroleptics will be regularly ordered. The patient has a public defender and has a right to appeal to the decision but in most cases the judge follows the advice of the psychiatrists. I am sure your country has comparable rules.
If your question regards the relationship of schizophrenia and religion, this field is interesting to say the least and a minefield if you really want to get into it. I’m talking about visions, “hearing the voice of God” and stuff like that. While in psychiatric placement I had a bardo-like experience, and this was before I read the Tibetian Book of the Dead.
What about a person who refuses to take antidepressants and as a result is unproductive at work (maybe even collecting unemployment or on disability), grouchy, negative, and generally unpleasant? Wouldn't it be justifiable to force that person to take antidepressants if it would really make him/her a better and more productive person?
Let me back up here a second. Absolutely anything and everything is justified if some human wants to rationalize it to be so. All of these standards and rules are made up. Morality is, and always has been, an arbitrary construct that places self-imposed limits on behavior. If someone else wants to rationalize this, they are more than free to. Personally, I would never ever force an "insane" human to eat, drink, or take any sort of substance. I'm also going to back up and say I strongly object to the language of "insane" on the whole, and would never apply it to the scenario outlined above. As such, I'm not particularly inclined to indulge the above example with much consideration.
In the US, I believe it is fairly easy to force medication on mentally ill when they become a nuisance. A judge must issue a court order to put the person in a mental hospital. If the person refuses medication, then it is time for the infamous "booty shot".
I've been thinking about #7 myself. Religion has taken money from me in the past, so it is only fair that I get something back for my retirement. If I could only find a way to make others care what I say instead of doing the face palm all the time.
I've been thinking about #7 myself. Religion has taken money from me in the past, so it is only fair that I get something back for my retirement. If I could only find a way to make others care what I say instead of doing the face palm all the time.
If your question regards the relationship of schizophrenia and religion, this field is interesting to say the least and a minefield if you really want to get into it. I’m talking about visions, “hearing the voice of God” and stuff like that. While in psychiatric placement I had a bardo-like experience, and this was before I read the Tibetian Book of the Dead.
Schizophrenia and religion is an interesting topic.
Jesus: insisted on being crucified in spite of every attempt to dissuade him
Muhammad: face would turn red and he would have seizure-like symptoms before hearing from Allah
Paul: had the vision where he fell off his horse and saw Jesus
... schizophrenia-like symptoms seem to be the norm among religious founders
On the other extreme, you have the USSR where people could be diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia if they became interested in Buddhism, Christianity, or whatever. They would be medicated until they were cured.
In the USSR, Generally speaking "punative psycharitry" was reserved for high level dissidents (e.g party officials and intellectuals) who started to doubt the legitimacy of Communism. "sluggishly progressing szcheophrenia" is a way of saying they have anti-social ideas because they are dissidents but aren't showing any other symptoms.
In a Romanian prison, religious people were forced to undergo a "baptism" by sticking their head in a font of **** and excrement. this happened so often that some of the prisoners did it involuntarily, without being ordered to do so (because they were so psychologically broken down by this point).
This is a somewhat unique abuse to communist systems because unlike the Nazis who believed people were enemies or inferior for "genetic" reasons, Communists believed that people could be environmentally "conditioned" out of their beliefs.
I've come accross references that this sort of thing was even more widespread in China during the Cultural Revolution than in the USSR, but still persists now only to a much lesser degree. I've read it goes on in Cuba as well but is related to specific individual cases rather than large groups of people. This is therefore still an on-going human rights problem in a few countries.
What about a person who refuses to take antidepressants and as a result is unproductive at work (maybe even collecting unemployment or on disability), grouchy, negative, and generally unpleasant? Wouldn't it be justifiable to force that person to take antidepressants if it would really make him/her a better and more productive person?
I fit under that catagory. I've had depression for seven years and have recovered quite a bit, but haven't been unable to do a job as a result (I finished my degree though, nor have I ever accepted benifits). I'm sort of hoping 2016 will be "the" year when I can get on with stuff.
The reason I have never taken anti-depressants was because I read a quote by Erich Fromm, author of The Sane Society. He said that in an "insane society" it is the neurotics who are closer to sanity, as their internal conflicts and symptoms are signs that there is still a struggle being waged for survival. Whereas the person who behaves in a totally "normal" way is emotionally dead inside and has therefore given up the struggle for sanity. So why would I want to be drugged into being "normal" if that normality is what is making me ill? I don't want to cover up the disorder because it suits everyone else for me to shut up so they can continue to fester with their own problems rather than be reminded on their own frailty. I want to cure it so I can be a more productive person.
it turned out I was right to do this, as I later realised/accepted I was bisexual and "came out". things have improved alot since then but its still hard fighting invisible barriers to health. The problem is that there is a strange "blurring" between medicine and morality, and whilst homosexuality has been taken off the list of mental illnesses You can still see how religious morals regarding sex are passed off as "scientific" without necessarily having much evidence to support it. e.g. when our understanding of sex is reduced to a biology lesson, is sexual objectification and rape culture simply part of our "biological" make up to procreate, or should we have sex because we enjoy it rather than reducing it to the economics of making babies for society.
label any prejudice "scientific" and suddenly it has authority. thats true of the USSR and its true of the West. In the 19th century many people regard "hysteria" (or neurotic behaviour) as a psychological condition limits to women because they men were supposed to be "tough". many racist and sexist prejudices were built on moral evaluations of the cogntive capacity of people to exercise reason, so psycharitry can often be prejudice in a labcoat:
At present, Mental illnesses are not dignosed on the based on indentifiable causes. We simply "don't know" the causes of mental illness and so are flying in the dark. technological developments in genetics and brain scans may give us a better incling of what the causes are- but its still quite an open debate as without a clear objective cause it is very hard to identify even if it is a disorder. Rather, mental disorders are currently classiffied based on "clusters" of symptoms which may or may not be present. So diagnosises vary wildly and often include multiple overlaping (or "co-morbid") disorders. The person who does the diagnosis is also a factor, as psychartiry since at least the days of freud very much relies on the intutiton of the analyst to judge the inner and unconscious picture of the patients psychological profile. They can and do, get it wrong because they can project on to their patients and form emotional attachments which mean they can be as self-decieving as the rest of us. psychartrists are not possessed by "pure" reason, but are fallible like the rest of us.
There are some very unpleasant truths in all this; drug companies can and do rig the research for their medications to look good, and there are widespread cliams that many drugs actually make the symtopms worse not better. nobody cares about the "crazy" people as long as they are out of sight- so you can shove whatever pill down their throat you want. this probably is going to change as mental problems such as anxiety and depression are now extremely widespread in western societies. it's about 1 in 4 people who suffer from a mental illness (I think excluding dementia) in their life-time. that is getting "difficult" to hide and starts to look less like an individual problem and more like a societal problem. we now have an on-going and largely hidden epidemic of mental illness in the western world, so it is reasonable to expect that how we define "sanity" may change soon. we are slowly becoming a society that is dependent on drugs because the "norms" of human behaviour have so far departed from what may infact be healthy for us.
That said, there are people who pose a threat to others and that threshold of "harm" is ussually the best and only reasonable guide for whether someone should be institutionalised. It is easier to do with people who pose a risk of harm to others, rather than those who pose a risk of harm to themselves. I would hesitate as to whether drugs can treat "violent behaviour" because of how brain chemistry works and you'd need to ask an expert on that. But in answer to your question, this is the only one I criteria I would rely on- and I would say it is a moral position rather than a wholly "scientific" or "medical" one. it is really hard to find "objective" labels of what is normal or healthy behaviour and I have had to rely on my own intution about what makes me happy or upset. thats like navigating the dark corners of your mind where you have been forced to hide alot of things because they aren't "acceptable" even if they may infact be healthy. thats why it taken seven years and it is not a reliable method, but its the best I've got and its got me this far. a psychartrist really can't do anything more other than talk to me. Even after nearly a century since Freud, "the talking cure" is the best we've got because it means you're actually looking for the cause rather than potentially trying to cover it up with medications.
Forcing medication on somebody in order to make them "normal" is completely unacceptable in my view. Psychology is making steps away from such views, but there's still an element of viewing mental illness as something that must necessarily be cured. As a rule, I'm very much in favour of individuals being allowed to make their own choices. If somebody doesn't want to be "cured" then they shouldn't have to be.
The flip side of this is when a person becomes a direct threat to others as a result of a mental illness. First, I should point out that this is extremely rare. In such cases I could see an argument for forcing a person to take medication in order to bring them to a safe level of lucidity. I see this as preferable to the alternative, which is to lock them up.
To my mind, the most difficult question here is what to do when somebody becomes a direct threat to themselves. As I say, I'm in favour of people making choices for themselves and this includes suicide (though I would strongly recommend that anybody considering suicide should explore all other options first). Mental illness can make it more difficult to determine whether or not somebody is making an informed decision.
For example, I've suffered from depression for a long time. There have been moments in my life where suicide was an extremely attractive option. Since finding medication that works for me, that isn't so much the case any more. I wasn't forced to take this medication, but I was definitely encouraged. However, if I had been forced to take it, I might be grateful that in this particular instance, the choice was made for me. Then again, I might not. It's a difficult area that probably doesn't have a correct, or even best, answer.
What makes that one special? Far as I'm aware, we don't "force" people to take substances in this country and I can neither confirm nor deny what Picnic said in response earlier. A person who plans to commit a crime might be jailed, but while in jail, we don't force them to take substances (again, as far as I'm aware).
To my mind, the most difficult question here is what to do when somebody becomes a direct threat to themselves. As I say, I'm in favour of people making choices for themselves and this includes suicide (though I would strongly recommend that anybody considering suicide should explore all other options first). Mental illness can make it more difficult to determine whether or not somebody is making an informed decision.
For example, I've suffered from depression for a long time. There have been moments in my life where suicide was an extremely attractive option. Since finding medication that works for me, that isn't so much the case any more. I wasn't forced to take this medication, but I was definitely encouraged. However, if I had been forced to take it, I might be grateful that in this particular instance, the choice was made for me. Then again, I might not. It's a difficult area that probably doesn't have a correct, or even best, answer.
After a long period feeling sucicidal, I've built up a sense that, you at least have to try to stop someone from committing sucicide as its a question of self-respect and self-love. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that someone has a "right" to commit sucicide based on asserting an individual choice as this is sort of where "ethics" in any recognisable sense just breaks down. it's sort of freedom taken to the absurd extreme where it extinguishes the very person who is said to have freedom. so I agree, it may not have a correct or even best answer.
I would argue (purely speculatively in trying to make sense of it) that we are social animals so the effect of a person's sucicide does not happen in isolation and leaves an impact on those "left behind". our social nature blurrs our individuality and so our freedom can have tyrannical consequences. I would think that humans, as natural hedonists, are sort of programmed to want to live and something has to go quite badly wrong for a person to want to commit sucicide (including myself) but it is not the fault of the person because we have been "bullied" into being depressed as the new "normal".
the subject has come up on RF a fair number of times, but I remember when I was on Revleft.com the reason I left was because there was a (second) attempted sucicide and one of my freinds on their tried to intervene and saved this persons life. he got alot of resentment for doing that, and I was aware of how common mental problems were on the site, and as this was a "sore spot" given my past history, it was the reason I left incase there was another attempt.
I'm glad to hear your meds are working though. best of luck.
I've been thinking about #7 myself. Religion has taken money from me in the past, so it is only fair that I get something back for my retirement. If I could only find a way to make others care what I say instead of doing the face palm all the time.
After a long period feeling sucicidal, I've built up a sense that, you at least have to try to stop someone from committing sucicide as its a question of self-respect and self-love. I'm very uncomfortable with the idea that someone has a "right" to commit sucicide based on asserting an individual choice as this is sort of where "ethics" in any recognisable sense just breaks down. it's sort of freedom taken to the absurd extreme where it extinguishes the very person who is said to have freedom. so I agree, it may not have a correct or even best answer.
I should perhaps clarify here that I consider morality an entirely subjective affair. To my mind, it's down to the individual to decide where to draw the line. A person's cultural surroundings may inform this decision, but I don't hold that those values are right or wrong in an objective sense. Nor do I hold that the individual is ever objectively right or wrong.
This doesn't mean I'm amoral though (I hold that true amorality is likely impossible for a sentient being) as I have constructed my own system of morality. The topic of suicide is one where I find it difficult to decide what I think of as right or wrong. This generally means I fall back on the old get-out clause of "It depends on context."
That said, I feel the same way as you, in that there's some degree of compulsion to at least try to prevent somebody from taking their own life.
I would argue (purely speculatively in trying to make sense of it) that we are social animals so the effect of a person's sucicide does not happen in isolation and leaves an impact on those "left behind". our social nature blurrs our individuality and so our freedom can have tyrannical consequences. I would think that humans, as natural hedonists, are sort of programmed to want to live and something has to go quite badly wrong for a person to want to commit sucicide (including myself) but it is not the fault of the person because we have been "bullied" into being depressed as the new "normal".
I definitely agree that suicide doesn't end with the individual. The impact on loved ones is something that should (in my opinion) be taken into consideration.
I think a lot of people struggle to understand depression. It's perhaps something you have to experience to truly comprehend. I suspect that this might be why it often carries a stigma. People often don't realise that saying, "just do something to cheer yourself up" isn't particularly helpful.
the subject has come up on RF a fair number of times, but I remember when I was on Revleft.com the reason I left was because there was a (second) attempted sucicide and one of my freinds on their tried to intervene and saved this persons life. he got alot of resentment for doing that, and I was aware of how common mental problems were on the site, and as this was a "sore spot" given my past history, it was the reason I left incase there was another attempt.
It can be a difficult subject to discuss. That's part of the reason why I tend to adopt a somewhat detached air when I do discuss it if I'm honest with you. At any rate, I think it was wise of you to leave. Sometimes it's better to just remove yourself from those situations
I fit under that catagory. I've had depression for seven years and have recovered quite a bit, but haven't been unable to do a job as a result (I finished my degree though, nor have I ever accepted benifits). I'm sort of hoping 2016 will be "the" year when I can get on with stuff.
I also hope 2016 is a good year for you. People are constantly telling me to quit my whining and take antidepressants. I don't take them because they made me feel so awful last time. I am afraid to risk feeling that bad again, but sometimes I wonder if somebody could simply force me to take antidepressants and I might be thankful for the positive result. I might be a dynamo of productivity, a joy to be around, etc. If somebody really knew that this result could be achieved, and if we knew that I would be thankful afterwards, wouldn't it be a crime NOT to force me? Perhaps they could hide the pills in a Twinkie so that I wouldn't even notice?
