The Medical Thread

[cheerfulgreek]

Originally Posted by AKA_Monet

A person not inflicting harm on others or him/herself cannot be legally "forced" into treatment. In fact, it is against the law to do place them in "hospital" (sanitarium). They have to be willing to go and sign themselves in for treatment. Now, if they get arrested, usually for hurting someone or him/herself, they can be placed in the psych ward. If they accept treatment options, and rarely they do, they let them out at a defined period of time.

The second issue is I do not want any law enforcement official diagnosing anyone. That is NOT their job, nor in their contracts. Of course, they do make a call whether to simply arrest for criminality vs. psychotic behavior. But, I can tell you, many cops do NOT want the make the diagnosis. Only a trained healthcare professional should make that determination. And I also know that psych evaluation is a high stress job and the money is not that great to give full effort into it...

A psychologist or psychiatrist has it rather nicely, but the length in time to be trained is what deters people from pursuing those positions. They have to be dedicated. Same with a Social Worker (license clinical and/or Masters level) and with them they suffer burn out relatively easily.

One can only go as far as the patient is willing to let them go...

Sadly, the onus is on the patient with these particular diseases: There is no overt pathology, there is not a blood diagnostic test, there is barely a DNA microarray on the illness and the drugs have severe side-effects that does not directly affect the target organ and moreover takes 2-3 weeks for quasi-stability with short pharmakinetics of ~6 hours... Who would want to be a drooling, headachy, dud for 12 hours out the day when alcohol and weed are cheaper?

lol lol lol My God did this give me the giggles.

Despite a few publicized cases, of people with a serious mental illness committing violent crimes, patients with psychosis are responsible for a small amount of the violence in our society. Recent studies show that people with a psychotic illness have a modest increase in the odds of violent behavior. But other factors, including drug abuse and poverty are much stronger contributors to violence. I know people with mild cases of mental illness can't be forced into treatment, I was just saying that I think they should. For example, look at the Virginia shootings. The killer was treated for severe anxiety disorder and continued receiving therapy throughout his younger years in highschool, but then he was taken off of the therapy and whatever special education he was receiving. When he got to college he was stalking women, and professors even suggested that he get counseling. None of this would have happened if he would have been getting some kind of special education along with threapy. Though, in his case, this was a severe mental illness, but I honestly think the mild case patients should be forced into treatment too.