New York makes it easier to commit people with severe mental illnesses
Just a moment...
The foundation of the new policy is that New York state will be able to authorize first responders to forcibly hospitalize mentally ill New Yorkers who cannot meet their own basic needs such as food, shelter or medical care.
If YOU try to section me Mark you will have crossed a line and I will section you, so help me...
You've had your fun with the sectioning. There will be no more sectioning today
Involuntary psychiatry is a violent practice that strips its victims of all human rights and effectively all due process. It is an unimaginable horror that can possibly lead to coercive psychiatry or medicalized rape.
“who appear to be mentally ill and who display an inability to meet basic living needs” could be taken against their will to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
Not being able to provide for your needs is not mental illness. An appearance of mental illness is not proof that somebody needs involuntary commitment. First responders are not equipped to diagnose mental illness - this is a stripping of rights and imprisonment.
If somebody is unable to provide for their needs, give them the ability to do so. Provide food, real housing, actual medical care, and an option for outpatient mental health care for them to recover if they are not in crisis.
I understand some people are severely mentally ill, are in crisis, and are a DANGER to themselves and others and need care ASAP, but this is just targeting impoverished individuals, who may be homeless, based on what is effectively hearsay.
We can do better than this as a society.
It does bring up a tough question though: what do we do with people who need treatment but refuse to accept it?
I have been asking that question my whole life, and even more so now with certain politicians and governmental figures.
Find a way of treating them and helping them to adjust to society without the use of coercion or a violation of their rights. That means giving them real legal representation, giving them access to courts that are open to public observation (mental health courts are NOT sufficient), giving them access to second opinions, and exhausting social supports (e.g. housing them in a safe environment) without imprisoning them.
The bar for being declared incompetent and unable to consent to treatment (which leads to forced psychiatry) is not high enough. Even coming from a psychiatrist, it is effectively hearsay in my opinion. There is not enough due process and outside oversight.
There are real side effects to psychiatry - it's called iatrogenic illness. When somebody is in crisis, what do they prescribe? They prescribe powerful drugs, usually neuroleptics. For example, tardive dyskinesia can affect up to 20% of people who take neuroleptics. It could be permanent - look up YT videos of those afflicted. It's easy to stereotype somebody as mentally ill if they develop TD.
It could be that somebody reacts nicely to the drugs they are prescribed. But what happens when they are released and can't afford treatment or become non-compliant with treatment? It can lead to disastrous withdrawal and terrible side effects, that can result in more hospitalization or a worsening of their illness.
Knowing that, why would you take away somebody's ability to not consent to treatment? Why can't we give them access to intensive therapy, that they consent to, that properly addresses the root causes of their illness and inability to care for themselves? Why do we treat traumatized individuals by inflicting MORE trauma on them? Being kidnapped, imprisoned, and medically raped is traumatizing. Why are individuals not given the option to not consent to medication, but only consent to therapy?
I invite you to look at Soteria Houses, which is a different model of care, that successfully achieves remission in those that are experiencing first-episode psychosis/schizophrenia. If they can achieve remission with little to no psychiatric medication (and likely no life-long prescriptions) in a severe illness, without coercion or locked doors, why don't we give more people the chance to experience that? What if they have the capacity to heal in a supportive environment that doesn't strip them of their rights - an environment that respects their will and autonomy?
Can we nominate people? There's an Orange that comes to mind.
He's probably behind this so he can send more US citizens to the camps.
I've been thinking about this.
There's plenty of delusional politicians who come to mind as well. It would also help enormously with public health funding .. lived experience and all.
This seems like it's a very, very good thing.....so lets see how people on here spin it as something absolutely deplorable.
Impoverishment and homelessness are issues that society, and capitalism at large, refuse to address with real solutions. Those solutions are too expensive to those that make policy.
A housing crisis, a depression of wages and rise in cost of living, inaccessibility of timely and cost-efficient health care interventions (mental or otherwise), inaccessibility of drug rehabilitation and a system that punishes drug use criminally, and having no social safety net (to prevent such occurrences of homelessness and lack) is the recipe that creates the situations that these individuals experience.
The headline is not accurate, read the article.
Thank goodness. Ever since we got rid of the asylums, things have been going downhill, and I'm glad to see that someone's getting sense back.
Jail isn't better, and this will be used to hunt the poor even more extensively, not just the homeless. A day late on your rent and keep your apartment messy? Congrats, you get a nice vacation under this proposal.
People who slip by a day and just keep a mess tend to have support networks. If they're employed, they're not likely to get thrown in a mental health section in NY. Plus, again, this is New York, not Texas or Florida. Consider the context here. There's a lot of homeless people in the City who refuse care and get washed through the system. They aren't getting held in jail, but they're racking up fines, putting them further behind and worse off. Mandatory care is needed for some people. And we can't write laws to cover the corner cases without risking overreach.
Jail and asylums are very different. Jail is a tool for incarceration, it gives us systematic racism. Asylums are for crazy shit, it gives us LORE.
"Forcibly hospitalize" is not "jail".
A day late on your rent and keep your apartment messy? Congrats, you get a nice vacation under this proposal.
Completely untrue misinformation.