Forced Medication is rape of the soul

I think we come at the issue form two different perspectives. From my perspective, I think you have to be able to convince mental health professionals, administrators and politicians to consider the consequences of their actions and whether or not there are better ways of delivering mental health care services to the community. If you could truly do this then it would change would be a real possibility. I consider this a top-down approach. Whereas what I think you're saying is that through the use of persuasion individuals can recruit many individuals to their cause which can pressure the system.

The reason why I don't think public pressure works is because the mental health care system is very technical. Someone critical of the mental health care system needs to know about law, psychology, ethics and a considerable amount about clinical practice in order to formulate a better model for mental health care (no critic of psychiatry to my knowledge has done this).

For example, critics of involuntary commitment who propose ending this practice overlook the fact that this many persons with mental health problems may end being put in jail as opposed to a hospital which is much worse.

Youre position is very understandable. But in the patient doctor dynamic of mental health the patients/potential patients do constitute a majority.
When public opinion is changed majoritarianism wins out, for better or worse. I feel that changing the idea the masses has about how to handle mental illness will be the only thing to foster change, as i do not feel that most establishments, weather they be government, corporate or medical will have the motivation to change without external pressure.

The public has been successful in bringing about other changes to many practices they deemed unacceptable, such as banning the use of certan chemicals in agriculture, a better treatment of farm animals, and the boom in the popularity of organic food. Most of the people who were pushing for change to these practices were not farmers, chemists or vetrinarians, but they made change anyway through activism and consumer choices. Therefore I feel that if major change occurs to how hospitalisation is handled public opinion will likley have a hand in it.

You seem worried that some people may have wound up in jail. That is true and unfortunate, but it begs the question of how far a society is willing to go to prevent crime or self harm. Mental patients constitute a small minority of individuals who are harmful or dangerous, what about other groups who are a statistic danger to themselves or others? I feel that the mental patients are picked out in hypocritical ways (which would invite a whole new debate about the way in which society handles people with any elevated level of dangerousness)

Hey HaxX,

Sorry for being tardy but I had to think over how to reply for a while.

HaxX wrote:When public opinion is changed majoritarianism wins out, for better or worse. I feel that changing the idea the masses has about how to handle mental illness will be the only thing to foster change, as i do not feel that most establishments, weather they be government, corporate or medical will have the motivation to change without external pressure.

Although there are examples of cases in which public pressure has reformed certain social institutions (i.e. removal of segregation in schools, the addition of prisoners' rights in prisons, the success of the feminist movement, etcetera), many of the significant changes in society remain beyond public control. The state is incredibly good at persuading you that certain institutions like the mental health care system are run by the public and should the public decide that they would like things to change they could easily do so. However, this isn't really the case.

Suppose you wanted to eliminate forced treatment from your state or province. In a democratic society you would have to go to the residing political party and persuade them to change the laws so that forced treatment is now illegal. However, no political party wants to do this or even considers it an option (In Canada. The United States, Britain may be more different) because the very structure of modern societies is based on a model of controlling and managing people with mental disorders for utilitarian reasons (i.e lowers expensive hospitalization rates, increases stability in society and deals with people who violate the law but shouldn't be incarcerated).

The practices of the mental health care system including civil commitment and forced treatment are done for political and economic reasons which the public plays a very small role in. The only way to reform these institutions would be to play on their level by showing that (a) there are better ways for them to accomplish their goals, (b) their goals are not what they really want, or (c) other goals are more important.

In this sense, I'm a pragmatist who really tries to argue that some of the practices of the mental health care system don't help them achieve their goals (i.e. repeatedly arresting and forcibly drugging someone with Bipolar Disorder is not going to make them medication compliant. It may do the opposite while you squander excessive amounts of resources chasing after one person).

One obstruction is that more compassionate, one on one care which is tailor made to the patient is expensive. Another example would be the financial interests of pharmacutical companies which have contracts with providers, especially state providers.

I looked at your profile and noticed you are from Canada. I have no idea how this stuff works in Canada. (I would be inclined to think better, if for no other reason than being raised in a poor, liberal American household I was taught that health care is more accesable in Canada, and must therefor be superior.) So we might be talking about apples and oranges.
There have been a few states and counties which have passed laws making it unlawful to force treatment on a person without a court hearing, and some areas have banned the use of restraints. There has been a steady, but slow trend towards using less force which is mostly a positive change in my opinion. It was after all not to long ago that someone could have a family member commited and lobotomised simply because they got tired of them, or felt they were hard to contol.(for convinience!)
I'm of the opinion that as mental illness becomes more "democratised" by the DSM, drug companies and popular culture it, will become a bigger and bigger concern for the public. because hey, if one in seven, then one in four then everyone "at some point in their life" is branded a sufferer, then how these "sufferers" are treated becomes a very big issue. How fast change occurs seems to just depend on which side has greater vehemence and capital.

There are some obvious disadvantages to the system as it is now.

Forced inpatient care is more expensive
Forced commitment fosters resentment and fear in the patient which may make them dangerous to staff
The patient may suffer further emotional damage, worsening their mental state.
The patient may be denied employment and health benifits if their commitment becomes known
There is the social stigma
A patient may be injured / permanantly changed from the medications given
A patient could loose their job, home, or possesions because of a commitment.
Difficulty in holding mental health staff accountable for malpractice and abuses.

The mental health act of many states creates a "no mans land" where civil rights can be dismissed at will because a commited patient is deemed incompitent. In many cases being commited in this way is like being deported to a third world country where your rights as an American citizen are ignored. Most people who are forced into treatment are not in a psychotic state, they are lucid, and know what is happening to them. This includes rebellious teenagers, suicidal people and addicts.
Becuase of the insulation of "mental health" laws there developes an environment where mental health staff can get away with doing almost anything with legal impunity. Because the patient is automatically deemed too insane to know what has happened to them, such facilities become very hard to sue. (I would much rather be arrested, cuffed and thrown in a cell, where my rights are intact and I can see an attorney, than endure forced treatment in a mental hospital)

...But I've gone off on a tangent here, I guess the point I was trying to make is that there are big problems with how things are now, and that many of these problems are self evident.
Repeatedly arresting and forcibly drugging someone with Bipolar Disorder may not make them more compliant, but it seems like somone is profiting from the practice, and it is these motivations which should be examined.

Yes. I agree. Well said

I, too, had to chime in here. I also agree, but believe the real solution is a two-pronged approach. Although, I must say that over 80 posts, almost all written using higher education "Proper English", or in laymen's Terms, "Doctor Speak", has IMHO been very counter-productive to the majority. By majority, I clarify, I do mean what I call "US", or in the Code I personally created while coming out of a "Forced Geodon Haze", "The D&D's, aka the Disabled & Disenfranchised-broken down further-The Infirm &/or The Poor". The D&D's make up the majority of indigenous people in the 'System' of Mental Health. As such, I think we can all agree, MOST of 'US D&D's', are completely, utterly confused when we end up involuntarily committed to a locked-down Psych Ward, ultimately because we've been dx'd for anxiety/bipolar/psychoses', AND, no thanx to shady HIPAA withholding of personal Psych Records, WE don't/might not even know about! Especially with the use of well-crafted double entendres, that only college uber grads, and luckily those select few who are self-edu-macated. These well crafted double entendres, are the very reason most of [b]'US'[/b] can have the various "Mental Health Laws" used against "US" in the FIRST PLACE! Terms like patience/patients, denies, refused, et al; confused the living crap outta me, and quite honestly still do! I can easily see myself using the words/terms "Soul Rape", to describe how I still feel, even though I can/could easily string forced drugging while Un-Constitutionally denied my Right to Liberty/Freedom/Due Process! Let's all agree that a grass-roots effort to wrangle/rustle up as many peeps/people as possible who may have had their due process rights ripped from them by coercion, decipt, unethical/illegal manners, who also may still fall within their State's/State/Status' Statute of Limitations, to file as many Civil Suits as possible, maybe even a Class-Action as well! Let the attorneys take it from there. Once "US D&D's" have wrangled up enough civil suits to use the UN's latest 'Charter for The Rights of the Physically Disabled' enacted fully in 2008 in Denmark (which the U.S.A. still won't fully recognize because it proclaims that forced drugging/illegal inpatient Civil Commitment is "TORTURE"), but another Charted State's National, CAN bring the charge to the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on Torture! At this juncture, let the 'higher uber gradspeak's or masters of the double entendre, use the outcomes of anti-torture treaty lawsuits, serve to be the inroad to lasting, permanent Policy/Legislative Advocacy, for the future patients to enjoy, unlike our generation, who never had the luxury.

In laymens D&D's/US speak- 1) Round up the peeps like 'US', who've been "force drugged/soul raped", to when we have enough of US, we can have peeps who still fall under their State's Statutes of Limitations, to sue the crap outta those who've truly wronged "US"! 2) Let the lawyers take it from there all the way up to use International Laws on being physically disabled (as many of us are "Baker Acted" (Florida's notorious Mental Health Law's short title) for the forced withdrawal Psych imposes on opiods/benzos, so that we manifest symptoms of mental illness' like bipolar or acute psychosis), and use anti-torture treaties, to then effectively lobby legislative TRUE POLICY REFORM! In shorter-short, use the pain and sufferring to not only get legal/financial/ethical "payback", to pave the way for policy reform.........

In

uber-laymens

........."Can't we all just get along?"

I personally wouldn't use the expression "rape of the soul", but I do think that if one performs a kind of eidetic reduction (I am using that term metaphorically to describe reducing a phenomenon to its essentials, so please, spare me the criticisms) on the two phenomena, the points of similarity are many, thereby justifying an analogy.

Anyway, one metaphorical extension of the term, as has been pointed (although I am not conversant with the etymology, so am not aware if the term originally denoted forced sexual intercourse), is any violation or abuse, therefore I think the use of the term is justified in the context of forced drugging.

Infinite jester says, to paraphrase, that it is difficult sometimes to get valid consent because the patient is detached from reality and may not be able to understand the benefits of "treatment". First, I would reject the word "treatment", because in this context, I reject the presuppositions built into that word as being applicable here, namely that the "patient" has an illness, even though on another page Infinite jester says basically that a mind cannot be susceptible to illness.

As for the comment about detached from reality, whose reality?

Yes, you are right that in this sense the word "rape" is being used rhetorically to convince people that it is morally impermissible, which is why I would use it, because I do believe it is morally impermissible and that we must harness the rhetorical power of language in fighting this vile tyranny. Some people accuse me of being doctrinaire in this regards, of not allowing for the circumstances psychiatrists find themselves in, but this is not true, I merely think it absurd that we force people to take drugs on the grounds that they supposedly have a "mental illness", when their existence rests entirely on the authoritative proclamations of psychiatrists and on circular logic.

I've liked some of Infinite Jester's posts, but on this one he comes across as a bit pompous, like he were the king of logic and philosophy, sitting atop his Olympian perch wagging his finger reprovingly and with Olympian hauteur at us mere mortals.

In response to the comment Jester makes, "what is the solution...", I find this and other remarks on here astonishing coming from someone who has defended Thomas Szasz. He talks of "medication non-compliance", but that is just the cant of the forced-"treatment" brigade. Psychiatric drugs are mind altering drugs, not curative agents. The distinction between psychiatric "medications" and illegal mind-altering drugs is purely linguistic.

Let's just say, for the sake of further reasoning, that these people are unfit to make decisions for themselves and that the responsibility for making decisions should devolve upon some individual or group of individuals, because they are too "psychotic", why is the question of the fitness of those on whose shoulders the responsibility falls never broached? Seems to me that traumatized, vulnerable people need to be safeguarded against the predations, irresponsibility and stupidity of their supposed carers. Instead, almost all reasoning proceeds from the unquestioned premise that these people are fit to shoulder such responsibilities. That certainly isn't the way I see it.

As for the comment about leaving people to commit suicide, you are not making allowances for the limitations of current knowledge and technology. Psychiatrists are not existential alchemysts, indeed, seems paradoxical to me that a profession that has made such a large contribution to the augmentation of human suffering should be in any position to deal with suffering humanity. Anyway, lots of people commit suicide because of their experiences with psychiatry, and also having taken the very drugs and whatever other "treatments" are used to combat the all too reasonable urge of so many people to leave a cruel, unjust world (something psychiatry has in no small part contributed to), where the ugly truth is that unless you are a celebrity your death is a matter of indifference and inconsequence to most people anyway. Life's a bitch, and in such a world, forcing people to go on living, and subjecting them to further trauma, whilst circumscribing their freedom within the bounds of one of these so-called hospitals where all sorts of abuses take place, is not the compassionate thing to do.

-- Fri Jun 28, 2013 7:19 pm --

Jester said at one point about the supposed ripples of miscommunication on this thread, that, basically, thank god we have him to cut through it with reason! I don't see anything reasonable about such childish self-congratulation.

I am not surprised that, notwithstanding his critical-psychiatric posturing to the contrary, such a person as Jester identifies with the ideas and interests of the Mental Health Movement. People who esteem themselves the apostles of reason usually do.