51–60 of 145 posts
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Well not to Godwin the thread I think that might be taking things a bit too far.
You're Godwinning it pretty hard. Do you have a more lucid and less Godwinny argument than "well, Hitler!" ?
You'd definitely have people cutting the tattoos off.
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I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
You can very objectively prove that a person is missing a limb but often you cannot prove that a person is mentally ill. Often persons will be categorized as mentally ill just because they deviate in their beliefs or lifestyle from the mainstream culture. And yes, mentally ill persons HAVE a free will, don't tell me they don't as this would be equal to declaring that they are not human beings but just a lump of meat.…
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> What gives you the authority to institutionalize him? A government has the duty to provide for the welfare of their people. It's every government's goal to make their people healthier. > How do you force a person to take their medication? In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them. > Why should you do it for this particular person but not that particular person? If a person's m…
But people have rights . They have a right to not live in an institution if they don't want to. You want to disregard that right, because you think you know better for them than they do. Many of these people aren't dangerous and don't have infectious diseases, so there's no public health need to lock them up as you're suggesting.
If you are all there in the head, by all means live on the streets, stay filthy, don't eat and ignore people, but this man has a brain disease that makes him lose control of his mind.
If he was forcefully taken to the hospital, forcefully given medication, and recovered he would exclaim "Thank you for saving me! I had a disease in my brain that lead me to believe in crazy things: to be paranoid of police and even medical personnel. I spent 2 years on the streets suffering like this with no place I believed could help me, but you cured me."
If I had a mental disorder that made me go crazy--so crazy that it doesn't even enter my mind that I need help--I would hope that my government would restore my sanity (as I am unable to do so).
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Forcibly institutionalizing people is not a panacea.
No, but it's worth considering that when this man ended up in the hospital for a physical ailment they started treating him. That, and his daughter, were enough to bring him back. If he were to have been hospitalized, not institutionalized, I wonder if the outcome were the same. Our society assumes mental illness is totally different from physical illness, but in cases like schizophrenia the treatment ends up being v…
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Mentally ill persons enjoy the same rights that other citizens enjoy and have their own free will. As long as a person didn't commit any crime and is no risk to society or oneself you cannot institutionalize him or her. In any case I would refrain from making such broad generalizations about a society. Some societies prefer strong individual rights and others prefer a strong state that tells them what to do.
I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
When does this become a problem such that your naive views makes it impossible for people like me to integrate ourselves into society? Putting up in a soft version of prison isn't going to help us.
I can personally tell you that I have plenty of agency and I understand my situation. Please stop generalizing your naive views, okay?
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But people have rights . They have a right to not live in an institution if they don't want to. You want to disregard that right, because you think you know better for them than they do. Many of these people aren't dangerous and don't have infectious diseases, so there's no public health need to lock them up as you're suggesting.
These people don't have control over their mental faculties; they aren't competent enough to make a choice for what is best for them in the same way that minors aren't allowed to go truant or to consent to sex with an adult. If you are all there in the head, by all means live on the streets, stay filthy, don't eat and ignore people, but this man has a brain disease that makes him lose control of his mind. If he was f…
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Mentally ill persons enjoy the same rights that other citizens enjoy and have their own free will. As long as a person didn't commit any crime and is no risk to society or oneself you cannot institutionalize him or her. In any case I would refrain from making such broad generalizations about a society. Some societies prefer strong individual rights and others prefer a strong state that tells them what to do.
I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
A friend of my family studied medicine, and during his studies there was apparently a course where the lecturer used to bring in a mental patient each year.
This specific mental patient suffered from severe delusions. He by all accounts genuinely believed he was the rightful heir of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and had constructed an elaborate fantasy world around his childhood and how he came to grow up in a suburb of Oslo, with a Norwegian family.
But here's the thing: He was in full work (I don't remember as what - a plumber or electrician or something), and lived a seemingly normal, happy life. He functioned fully as a normal member of society in every way.
He had learned and understood that, while he still believed fully in his delusions, people around him thought they were totally crazy. And so he'd accepted he had to live "undercover". He enjoyed showing up in the lecture once a year because it gave him his an opportunity to talk about what he saw as his real self.
He would debate the students at length and expand on details the asked him about with ease.
Did he not have free will?
The point of inviting him was exactly for the lecturer to point out that many forms of mental illness does not remove the patients ability to reason or their ability to function, and that often it can be hard to determine if they are mentally ill at all. What if this man was right? Nobody other than him believed so, but that doesn't prove anything. We assume he was mentally ill, but for many forms of mental illness, the line between ill or not is a fuzzy line that boils down to subjective judgement, and where the more interesting question is whether or not the patient feels there is a problem they want help with.
Of course there are mental illness where the decision is clear-cut too. But mental illness is not a binary. It's not a matter of declaring you "crazy" or "sane".
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Mentally ill persons enjoy the same rights that other citizens enjoy and have their own free will. As long as a person didn't commit any crime and is no risk to society or oneself you cannot institutionalize him or her. In any case I would refrain from making such broad generalizations about a society. Some societies prefer strong individual rights and others prefer a strong state that tells them what to do.
I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
Capacity is narrowly defined. I might be able to chose where to live, but not chose how to spend my money. I might have capacity for everything apart from what food I eat.
The relevant laws are the Mental Capacity Act (can I chose what I do; what happens if I lose that ability;) and the Mental Health Act (can I be detained against my will; can I be transported to a place of safety for assessment; can I be medicated against my will).
If you live in the UK it's worth having a quick look at the guides for this. You probably won't need it, but it's a good idea to be prepared for the worst. (EG parent gets a dementia illness and starts giving money to telephone "microsoft repair" scammers; your adult child develops a psychosis illness; your co-founder torpedos your business by burying the product on a beach)
In general if you aren't a risk to other people and you're not in danger of killing yourself it's hard for them to hospitalise you against your will. (At least in UK). But it's important that if you have the choice between an informal admission (you go in voluntarily) or section (they detain you against your will) that you go in voluntarily.
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> What gives you the authority to institutionalize him? A government has the duty to provide for the welfare of their people. It's every government's goal to make their people healthier. > How do you force a person to take their medication? In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them. > Why should you do it for this particular person but not that particular person? If a person's m…
What you're asking for is that people who have the ability to chose (where to live; what medical treatment to have) are denied that choice. > In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them. Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness. Do you keep someone imprisoned for the rest of their life so that you can forcibly medicate them against their will?
No, until the mental disorder is controlled. After all avenues of curing are exhausted, and it's still not under control, then they can be released, provided there's no significant risk that they'll harm others or themselves.
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> What gives you the authority to institutionalize him? A government has the duty to provide for the welfare of their people. It's every government's goal to make their people healthier. > How do you force a person to take their medication? In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them. > Why should you do it for this particular person but not that particular person? If a person's m…
> A government has the duty to provide for the welfare of their people. You state this as if it is an universal principle. It is not. Why don't you and everybody else provide for your own welfare? > In a psychiatric institution you could for example inject the medicine into them. Some countries deem persons with certain sexual preferences as mentally ill. (homosexuals) How would you feel about imprisoning them in a p…