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Should individuals who pose risk to themselves be involuntarily committed?

Should people dangerous to themselves be involuntarily institutionalized?

  • In most cases.

    Votes: 5 26.3%

  • In extreme cases.

    Votes: 8 42.1%

  • Never.

    Votes: 6 31.6%
  • Total voters
    19
Sherman123 said:
So anytime an individual likes some policy or system another country has adopted the answer should be to 'move there'? That sounds like a recipe for stagnation.
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If you think they're doing everything right, then yes, you ought to go there, if they'll have you. Whining about things and not actually doing anything about it is foolish.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
The correct poll question would have been: which is the better place to warehouse the mentally ill, a prison or the mental ward?

The correct answer of course is "the mental ward".

Which means that we are doing it wrong.

Something few want to talk about.

Which is really really sad.

So we have TRUMP.
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That brings up the question of what is "mentally ill"? In a criminal court, the prosecution will have five psychiatrists/psychologists saying the man is legally sane and the defense will have five psychiatrists/psychologists saying he's quite mad.

Because a person is mentally ill doesn't mean they can't modify or control their behavior. I knew quite a few people who were mentally ill and managed to control certain behaviors because they didn't like being in jail. It didn't make them well but it did make them less of a problem. An example was a schizophrenic who heard people talking about him, plotting against him, in darkened movie theaters. Sometimes he'd get so agitated he'd hit people. He'd go to the psych ward, promptly get released since he refused to take meds, and he'd go to a movie. When he went to jail instead and was told that every time he misbehaved in a movie theater he'd go to jail, he quit going to movies. He was still quite mad but wasn't punching people in the movie theater.

To say mentally ill people should go to the mental ward implies that something can be done for them there. We did have the man who was declared innocent of murder by reason of insanity that the state hospital wanted to release six weeks later because they determined he was quite normal but let's face it, that's crazy. In fact, very few spend their life in a mental hospital and even fewer get "cured".

A man called the police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and said he needed to be arrested. He was killing people. His last name was Garrison. He was picked up and the police learned he'd been in a mental hospital in California for killing his mother and grandmother. They cured him and released him on furlough. He had to report back in for therapy which he did quite well. Eventually he met a panel of five doctors and was certified well. He laughed as he told the police that when the panel certified him well there was a woman's head in the trunk of his car in the parking lot.

Sometimes it makes you wonder who's crazy.

I wish it was cut and dried as people think. I wish psychiatrists and psychologists could really cure the mentally ill. I wish a court could order a mentally ill person to take their meds. I wish we were able to say who is and is not mentally ill. But, we can't.
 
Patrickt said:
That brings up the question of what is "mentally ill"? In a criminal court, the prosecution will have five psychiatrists/psychologists saying the man is legally sane and the defense will have five psychiatrists/psychologists saying he's quite mad.

Because a person is mentally ill doesn't mean they can't modify or control their behavior. I knew quite a few people who were mentally ill and managed to control certain behaviors because they didn't like being in jail. It didn't make them well but it did make them less of a problem. An example was a schizophrenic who heard people talking about him, plotting against him, in darkened movie theaters. Sometimes he'd get so agitated he'd hit people. He'd go to the psych ward, promptly get released since he refused to take meds, and he'd go to a movie. When he went to jail instead and was told that every time he misbehaved in a movie theater he'd go to jail, he quit going to movies. He was still quite mad but wasn't punching people in the movie theater.

To say mentally ill people should go to the mental ward implies that something can be done for them there. We did have the man who was declared innocent of murder by reason of insanity that the state hospital wanted to release six weeks later because they determined he was quite normal but let's face it, that's crazy. In fact, very few spend their life in a mental hospital and even fewer get "cured".

A man called the police in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and said he needed to be arrested. He was killing people. His last name was Garrison. He was picked up and the police learned he'd been in a mental hospital in California for killing his mother and grandmother. They cured him and released him on furlough. He had to report back in for therapy which he did quite well. Eventually he met a panel of five doctors and was certified well. He laughed as he told the police that when the panel certified him well there was a woman's head in the trunk of his car in the parking lot.

Sometimes it makes you wonder who's crazy.

I wish it was cut and dried as people think. I wish psychiatrists and psychologists could really cure the mentally ill. I wish a court could order a mentally ill person to take their meds. I wish we were able to say who is and is not mentally ill. But, we can't.
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Dealing with mental illness is always going to be messy, it is always going to be a job that is not finished, but we have given up. Actually it is worse than that, we do are best to ignore the reality, even when the way we do things cause extra unneeded pain and expense...for instance by trying to deal with mental health not in a healthcare setting but rather prison setting. Even the psycho wards we were appalled by and shut down were better than what we have now.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
Dealing with mental illness is always going to be messy, it is always going to be a job that is not finished, but we have given up. Actually it is worse than that, we do are best to ignore the reality, even when the way we do things cause extra unneeded pain and expense...for instance by trying to deal with mental health not in a healthcare setting but rather prison setting. Even the psycho wards we were appalled by and shut down were better than what we have now.
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Mental illness, where you cannot point to specific problems in the brain chemistry or composition, is just subjective. A lot of people like to think that "I don't like what you're doing" somehow makes that individual mentally ill. It doesn't.
 
Cephus said:
Mental illness, where you cannot point to specific problems in the brain chemistry or composition, is just subjective. A lot of people like to think that "I don't like what you're doing" somehow makes that individual mentally ill. It doesn't.
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Well sir, you are right about that....to have mental illness the society has to have standards of behavior, and that is one of the many things we can barely get done anymore.
 
One thing I learned in thirty years as a cop is that everyone is a little nutty but most cause no harm to themselves or anyone else. I dealt with a man who went quite mad in Vietnam. I committed a violent rape in our town, had the victim drive him to the apartment where he was staying, and then sat there until I arrived. He was crazy and dangerous but he knew it and wanted to be stopped. He was sent to a mental hospital where he promptly attacked another patient. He was transferred to a county jail where he promptly escaped. Whether he was in a mental ward or a jail cell, he was dangerous.

Another man we sent to prison killed two men in prison and was trying to kill a third when he was shot. He survived the shooting.

The measure isn't whether or not they're crazy. It's what harm they are doing.

I really don't trust psychiatrists or psychologists to help much with this.

One last comment. Being mentally ill and stupid are two different things. I have a friend who is convinced that the fumes from pork being cooked with cause him to burst into flames and burn down to ashes. He also is convinced the Mexican Mafia has secret pork-cooking facilities in every place he tries to live so he has to live in parks and private property, like a kindergarten, where he trespasses. The problem with the fumes is because of an injury to his nose when he was four-years old. When he talks to doctors about his nose injury he skips the Mexican Mafia and bursting into flames business. He knows the parts that sound really loony and skips them. Ted Bundy wasn't stupid but he was a dangerous sociopath. On the bright side, he never ran for president.
 
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Hawkeye10 said:
Well sir, you are right about that....to have mental illness the society has to have standards of behavior, and that is one of the many things we can barely get done anymore.
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Society should have no say in deciding a mental illness. Societal behavior and requirement change far to often for it to be a objective judge of mental capacities.

Mental illness, or deviation from the expected norm, is an individual thing and society punishes the individual for any differences.
 
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