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OptionsandHopeReMentalIllness 2 - 31 Jan 2008 - Main.AdamCarlis
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| | Just to take Eben’s comments today in a little different direction regarding mental illness and the option of a right to treatment: I realize there are no easy answers, and my observation is that, at the time that case was decided and especially prior to it, I’m not sure that this “right,” if exercised, would have produced even close to the type of result that people afflicted and their loved ones hope for. Having a mother who spent most of her adult life in and out of mental hospitals and halfway houses, my impression of her “treatment” options from the 1950s on – shock treatments, drugs that induced the incapacitating stupor that simulates the “incapacitation” that prison sentences produce – was that they were not options that most people would seek out, if given a choice. My sense is that for most people who are considered severely mentally ill, “treatment” options have historically been ineffective (but, new drug options give me hope). What I do think would have benefitted those who are mentally ill far more than the right to “treatment” would have been the right to free housing, necessities, and transportation. Not that I think one should be denied treatment. It’s just that treatment, as it was known leading up to and at the time of the decision, didn’t amount to much in terms of benefits to the recipient and, despite researchers’ efforts to find more effective drugs, ended up producing benefits largely to others in the form of “social control” rather than increased functionality to the patient. Maybe my impression is skewed, though. If so, what am I missing here? Eben? Others? Any thoughts?
-- BarbPitman - 31 Jan 2008 | |
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> | I agree. I wonder, however, what a change in the law would have done to that reality. If treatment were a right, perhaps additional resources would have been invested in figuring out how to treat people effectively.
-- AdamCarlis - 31 Jan 2008 | | |
| META TOPICMOVED | by="BarbPitman" date="1201810456" from="Sandbox.OptionsandHopeReMentalIllness" to="LawContempSoc.OptionsandHopeReMentalIllness" |
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OptionsandHopeReMentalIllness 1 - 31 Jan 2008 - Main.BarbPitman
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> | Just to take Eben’s comments today in a little different direction regarding mental illness and the option of a right to treatment: I realize there are no easy answers, and my observation is that, at the time that case was decided and especially prior to it, I’m not sure that this “right,” if exercised, would have produced even close to the type of result that people afflicted and their loved ones hope for. Having a mother who spent most of her adult life in and out of mental hospitals and halfway houses, my impression of her “treatment” options from the 1950s on – shock treatments, drugs that induced the incapacitating stupor that simulates the “incapacitation” that prison sentences produce – was that they were not options that most people would seek out, if given a choice. My sense is that for most people who are considered severely mentally ill, “treatment” options have historically been ineffective (but, new drug options give me hope). What I do think would have benefitted those who are mentally ill far more than the right to “treatment” would have been the right to free housing, necessities, and transportation. Not that I think one should be denied treatment. It’s just that treatment, as it was known leading up to and at the time of the decision, didn’t amount to much in terms of benefits to the recipient and, despite researchers’ efforts to find more effective drugs, ended up producing benefits largely to others in the form of “social control” rather than increased functionality to the patient. Maybe my impression is skewed, though. If so, what am I missing here? Eben? Others? Any thoughts?
-- BarbPitman - 31 Jan 2008
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