Mental illness affects all of our lives. We all know someone who knows someone who is suffering from a mental illness. It affects my life personally. I've been thinking about this issue from both sides, which are as follows.
On one hand, you could make a moral argument that if a person is mentally ill, we are obligated as a society to intervene and see to their treatment and possible cure. With mental illness comes a host of other health conditions and symptoms. The mentally ill suffer from delusions, paranoia, and disturbed thoughts that could make them dangerous to themselves or others. If they are poor or otherwise lacking in health coverage, then it would be doing them a favor for us to step in and show them there is someone who takes their illness seriously.
On the other hand, you could make a moral argument that they didn't ask us to interfere with their life. If a person's mental illness is not actually impairing their ability to function in society, then legally, we have no right to take action and confine them against their will. We have no right to impose treatments or medications on them, that could possibly make their condition worse. This would also involve taking away the rights of a large number of people; 1 in 10 adults in the US report depression, but not all are being treated. Should they all be rounded up against their will and forced into mental hospitals?
Where does one draw the line? I'm trying to find information on where in psychiatric law it dictates that doctors must confine a patient who has threatened suicide, or otherwise expressed suicidal ideation. I don't think a person should be condemned for mere words. There are times in everyone's lives when we say things out of anger, or frustration, or raw emotion; things we don't really mean. Are there certain forms of verbal expression that are always considered inappropriate regardless of context or circumstance?
What if, in attempting to do the right thing, doctors end up making matters worse? What if, in attempting to confine a patient they suspect of being suicidal, they end up driving him or her to commit suicide? Who is responsible then?
This all comes back to the question of how much of a right society has to intervene in the lives of others who are suffering from mental illness. Are these various psychiatric conditions even diseases at all? Or are they more like differences in the way people are put together? Are they differences that people and cultures can learn to accept and find a place for, like disabilities?
What are your thoughts?
On one hand, you could make a moral argument that if a person is mentally ill, we are obligated as a society to intervene and see to their treatment and possible cure. With mental illness comes a host of other health conditions and symptoms. The mentally ill suffer from delusions, paranoia, and disturbed thoughts that could make them dangerous to themselves or others. If they are poor or otherwise lacking in health coverage, then it would be doing them a favor for us to step in and show them there is someone who takes their illness seriously.
On the other hand, you could make a moral argument that they didn't ask us to interfere with their life. If a person's mental illness is not actually impairing their ability to function in society, then legally, we have no right to take action and confine them against their will. We have no right to impose treatments or medications on them, that could possibly make their condition worse. This would also involve taking away the rights of a large number of people; 1 in 10 adults in the US report depression, but not all are being treated. Should they all be rounded up against their will and forced into mental hospitals?
Where does one draw the line? I'm trying to find information on where in psychiatric law it dictates that doctors must confine a patient who has threatened suicide, or otherwise expressed suicidal ideation. I don't think a person should be condemned for mere words. There are times in everyone's lives when we say things out of anger, or frustration, or raw emotion; things we don't really mean. Are there certain forms of verbal expression that are always considered inappropriate regardless of context or circumstance?
What if, in attempting to do the right thing, doctors end up making matters worse? What if, in attempting to confine a patient they suspect of being suicidal, they end up driving him or her to commit suicide? Who is responsible then?
This all comes back to the question of how much of a right society has to intervene in the lives of others who are suffering from mental illness. Are these various psychiatric conditions even diseases at all? Or are they more like differences in the way people are put together? Are they differences that people and cultures can learn to accept and find a place for, like disabilities?
What are your thoughts?
via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1p7ASld
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