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« on: August 06, 2008, 04:14:37 AM »
I realize we're now getting far off from the topic of DS now, but I hope I'll be allowed to add a necessary voice to the discussion before we go back to DS.
I hate to talk so early in this, and want to be nothing but supportive, David, but there's also another side to the legal aspect of all this. In some cases like yours David, earlier treatment apparently would have saved you and others a lot of time and agony, and you're suggesting forced treatment. I understand why. There are also other cases, though, many of them, where the legal mechanisms that make it possible to commit people have been abused by an individual's family who consider the family member "strange" and "wrong" (I'm sure it's happened to many gays over the decades). Often the family has a financial stake, but there are other reasons too. It's far too easy in many cases for the family to get the cooperation of a psychiatrist in this, who are often not nearly as nice and respectful as yours must have been, David.
Non-conformity has very often been "medicalized" in the thinking of doctors and society. This is always a danger, in any society, and not just in totalitarian societies like the old Soviet Union. The label of mental illness is justifiably liberating to some such as you in your situation, David. At the same time, in very different situations, it's also used by more imperious, intolerant psychiatrists to label and then confine and drug the wrong individuals involuntarily. I have some personal knowledge of this, and know of many other cases too. Drug the wrong people with certain drugs (neuroleptics especially) and damage can easily be done, which psychiatrists don't necessarily have to acknowledge, because psychiatrists decide whether a person in confinement has been helped, not the patient. Confined patients are invalidated people and often aren't heard.
So the whole issue of committment is a muddy and messy one. We can't do without it as a society, but we really need for it not to be an easier process, and there need to be more safeguards against abuse. Maybe there's a way to have those safeguards and still make it easier and faster for people in your position to get help, David.
I also take a bit of a risk by saying this kind of thing. People often react angrily or contemptuously, no matter how hard I try to show that I'm taking everyone's experiences, both positive and negative, into account as best I can. Everyone's stories need to be told and heard.