111–120 of 143 posts
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Ironically, a great way to get out of psychiatric commitment is to cancel or threaten to cancel your health insurance.
Can you elaborate? I have my guesses what you mean but want to be sure I'm inferring correctly.
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As bad as it is, or as bad as it can be - as not everyone has bad experiences, I'm not sure I can recommend being dishonest with a mental health care provider during a time of crisis. Unfortunately, the system is designed to deal with a broad spectrum of people with myriad complexities. They do tend to take a very hard line approach and to assume the worst. They also have reason to not always trust the patient. It's…
> It should be noted that voluntary commitments can rapidly and more easily become involuntary commitments. After all, the patient has already admitted that they are unwell. Yes. Once admitted you have something no matter how convincing you are. Never talked to someone who walked out having not be diagnosed with something.
Warning: This may be a bit long and hastily written.
For reasons, I once doubted my sanity. To make a long story short, I used to use an obscene amount of drugs. I'm an addict in recovery, sort of - I take prescribed Suboxone.
I didn't use because I didn't feel well, I used because I wanted to feel even better. I was never a stereotypical addict, I was a functioning addict. I had no major trauma, no abuse history, or any history of mental illness.
I used because I liked being high. I wasn't escaping anything. My life was fine. I just liked getting high. My drug of choice was opiates, they helped me sleep and not think all the time. In fact, I have a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics - from MIT. I have plenty of money, healthy relationships, and no real criminal record, or at least convictions.
So, after rehab, I doubted my sanity. I doubted whether or not I was sane. I mean, what sort of sane person wants to shut their brain down and get high? What sane person knows the risks of addiction but still chooses to inject themselves with untested drugs purchased from shady people?
So, I went to the shrink and we had a few sessions. I did my best to be absolutely honest with them. Even during the peak of my drug use, I was completely honest with my physicians. They are tasked with saving my life, I shouldn't lie to them. I did the same thing with the head doctor.
Finally, he sets me up for advanced and expensive training. It was three eight hour days, one of which was spent taking this giant test called something like the MMPI. It is one of those tests where you fill in the ovals and it's thousands of questions long.
Two of the days were spent talking to people and doing some writing. They didn't feel obligated to hook me up to any of the machines.
It took a bit for the results to come back and it turns out, I'm not even remotely insane. I kind of hoped I was, because then I'd have a reason for some of my choices. Nope... I'm probably more close to clinically sane than the people who administered the tests.
Except, and this is the important part, they won't tell you that you're sane. This isn't verbatime, but it went something like this, "You show no signs of your life being negatively impacted by any diagnosable mental illness. You exhibit no significant traits of any clinically diagnosable disability as defined in the DSM-V." It was something like that.
So, even after all those tests, and apparently being pretty damned sane, they still wouldn't call me sane - only that I wasn't able to be diagnosed with anything on the list and that my life wasn't being harmed by any uncontrolable brain functions.
That's as close to sane as they appear to admit. The initial head doc hadn't done the tests, but had sent me out for them. We both got a good chuckle at the responses.
He then recommended I visit a therapist once a week and offered me some sleeping pills.
At the very least, they do seem inclined to keep you in their care. They won't say you're sane, either. Even when they couldn't pinpoint an issue, they still wouldn't say I was sane. The closest they came was saying that I'd no signs of my life being harmed because of a mental process I couldn't control.
Go figure?
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It is interesting because different people and different countries seem to have different ideas about he purpose of the the justice system. Punishment/retribution, correction/rehabilitation, or protecting the public. Someone like this may not be guilty due to insanity, but still be a danger to the public for example.
The thing that I worry about in these cases is the lack of "enforceability" of treatment. If keeping the person in control of themselves (such that they don't become violent again) means they need to be on medication for the rest of their lives, how do we ensure (post-release) that they'll always be on their meds? I know of people on various medications for psychiatric reasons that have (against their doctor's recomm…
> people who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or who have been arrested but found incompetent to stand trial — are involuntarily confined to psychiatric hospitals. Here, "psychiatric hospital" literally means "prison with carpets". There are locked doors instead of bars, and caretakers instead of guards, but it's a prison all the same. My brother had a mental breakdown ( not violent or criminal , but…
There was a very high profile case in Ontario over a decade ago. Basically, the man went into an absolute psychotic state on the travelling bus and cut the head off a stranger while everyone else on the bus ran for their lives. A decade later, he's been released- under a lot of conditions and on a lot of medication, but people are very upset that he'd ever be free at all. In interviews, he's a very interesting person…
Not Ontario, the case was in Manitoba.
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Doctors decided the person was clinically insane. Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. Which is why this is such a small problem - people aren't often declared sane and released if they committed serious crimes. > It's much easier to say that someone who executed other people is crazy than it is to say that person's craziness and tendencies toward evil have been cured. No. It's literally the exact sam…
> Yes it's hard to say someone is sane, and also rare. > No. It's literally the exact same evaluation. The reason it feels easier is because the stakes seem lower. Lock someone in prison or hospital? Big deal? When releasing, it's a risk assessment too. But the evaluation is exactly the same. You said I was wrong, and then wrote text that supported my comment. It doesn't matter if the evaluation is the same. The stat…
> showing insanity is different from showing sanity. There are true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives.
Right. And a false positive might send someone to this facility instead of prison while a true negative might let someone out while dangerous.
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Not sure what we are discussing - if doctors can decide someone as being disturbed and dangerous then they by definition can also decide that they are not. Now, this is obviously a hard and delicate problem when it comes to the releasing part of the equation. But the argument that they are either incapable or untrustworthy to make the judgment doesn't fly - why were they capable and trustworthy when locking someone u…
> why were they capable and trustworthy when locking someone up then? 1) The person would have been locked up whether found sane or insane. The only different was location. 2) You are admitting facts not in evidence, when you assume that the doctors were capable and trustworthy when determining the insanity. There is science and there is Science.
Right. Which is why that decision is done with lower stakes. But
> You are admitting facts not in evidence, when you assume that the doctors were capable and trustworthy when determining the insanity.
All I'm saying is that regardless of how accurate and trustworthy they are, if we trust them do do A we better trust them when doing B, even if the stakes and risk of mistakes are higher.
I can't see any other solution, do you? The only theoretically possible solution would be to lock people up for life if found insane - but I don't think that's a viable approach.
Tom, name made up, is a friend of mine. Sort of... I knew Tom for only a short while but I still write him letters and send him a few dollars every couple of weeks. When Tom was just 18, he had finished school and was headed off to a large university on a sports scholarship. Not having any money, and coming from a poor family, he looked forward to this. It was going to be his big break. But, Tom needed a wardrobe fit…
Amerika, Amerika, the beautiful.
> people who have been found not guilty by reason of insanity or who have been arrested but found incompetent to stand trial — are involuntarily confined to psychiatric hospitals. Here, "psychiatric hospital" literally means "prison with carpets". There are locked doors instead of bars, and caretakers instead of guards, but it's a prison all the same. My brother had a mental breakdown ( not violent or criminal , but…
My brother also had a psychotic episode last year, was on injections of risperidone for some months, now only zyprexa, back to univsersity, almost normal, except for bipolar/borderline behaviors and a tendency towards creating drama. People don't understand that when someone is in a psychotic state, they don't live in the same reality. It's not a question of free will or choice, or control. People see distorted faces…
Thoses drugs are dangerous and do not cure a patient usually leaving them in a worse state mentally. When you are the one forced to make these decisions its tough because there are no easy answers.
I find the traveling through time reference interesting. I remember the line from slaughter house 5. What cosmic truth was he approaching?
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Yeah, I got the impression it was because of some rules or fear of lawsuits. The result is the same though - I would never recommend checking in unless you have no other choice. If you do talk to a psychologist, know when to lie.
As bad as it is, or as bad as it can be - as not everyone has bad experiences, I'm not sure I can recommend being dishonest with a mental health care provider during a time of crisis. Unfortunately, the system is designed to deal with a broad spectrum of people with myriad complexities. They do tend to take a very hard line approach and to assume the worst. They also have reason to not always trust the patient. It's…
whose mental health care provider? Yours, or the one who is legally bound to be an agent of the state? you wouldn't talk to a lawyer who was obligated to report your confidences to the police, so why a doctor?