Involuntary Treatment Involuntary hospitalization is a legal procedure used to require individuals with mental health disorders to receive treatment withoaut their care. I am addressing this topic because there is an enormous problem in the medical field with treatment care. Involuntary health care treatment should not be forced upon because it can cause more harm than damage. Kendra’s Law was passed in 1999 and is a New York law concerning involuntary outpatient commitment. It grants judges the authority to issue orders that require people who meet certain criteria to regularly undergo psychiatric treatment. This is part of the problem with involuntary treatment. Tahe issue with Kendra’s law is that it is unconstitutional. At the Matter v. Storer case, the New York Court of Appeals recognized that the patient had the right to choose/ refuse treatment over the doctor. Therefore, forcing someone to go to a mental treatment facility is unconstitutional. Kendra’s Law is just something that the court uses when they don’t want to let someone who has a mental illness out on the street. One of the main issues is that patients tend to suffer from anosognosia. Anosognosia is a condition in …show more content…
The first is that the patient does get treated at some point. They might slip back into their illness but at some point, most of the patients have gotten better or fully recovered. This is beneficial to the patient’s health and the health of those around them. A study was shown that the total number of patients who don’t undergo psychiatric treatment could commit around 1,000 murders each year. There is a number that is smaller than that because even though patients who go to treatment get treated, some relapse. Also, if doctors didn’t put the patients on medications, they could potentially hurt themselves and the people around them. Medications do help the treatment process, but the dosage amount is
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Few issues will motivate Americans to put down their cheeseburgers and pick up a shotgun faster than the threat of infringement upon their civil liberties. The right to choose what toothpaste to buy, what color socks to wear with those sandals, or what spiritual doctrine to follow, is fiercely defended by both conservatives and liberals alike. In fact, this commitment to personal liberty is what defines us as Americans, and sets us apart from the rest of the world (even if only in our own minds). This attitude is embodied in our presidential rhetoric:
If someone who has been diagnosed with a mental illness is arrested, they need to be evaluated by a psychiatrist to determine their mental competency. Furthermore, everyone who is arrested and suspected of having a mental illness should be evaluated by a psychiatrist. If the psychiatrist diagnoses the person with severe mental illness (such as schizophrenia or bipolar), that can cause a person to hear, see, or believe things that aren’t real, then that person should be sent to a treatment facility, such as the Pathways center in the book. This policy would keep people who suffer from severe mental illnesses from being in prisons, which would allow more room for criminals, and give applicable and better treatment to the people with the mental illnesses that they would not receive in the jails. It may also save money (Belluck,
According to Szasz (2005), “In principle, the mental patient is considered competent (until proven [otherwise]). In practice, the client is regularly treated as if he were incompetent and the psychiatrist who asserts that he needs treatment is treated as if he were the patient’s guardian” (p.78). During the 1940’s patients who were mentally ill were considered “legally incompetent” when committed into a mental health facility. Relatives of the patients could release them by providing care in their homes for the client. Unfortunately, Szasz (2005) claims, that “the treatment of mental diseases is no more successful today than it was in the past” (p.78).
Solitary Confinement is a type of isolation in prison which a prisoner is segregated from the general population of the prison and any human contact besides the prison employees. These prisons are separated from the general population to protect others and themselves from hurting anyone in the prison. These prisoners are deprived of social interaction, treatments, psychologist, family visits, education, job training, work, religious programming and many other services prisoners might need during the sentence of their imprisonment. There are roughly 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement but 25,000 are in long term and supermax prisons. According to the Constitution, “The Eighth Amendment [...] prohibits the federal government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment”(US Const. amend. VIII). Solitary confinement is suppose to be the last straw for inmates to be in. If they don 't follow it, they can be on death row. Taxpayers pay roughly $75,000 to $85,000 to keep prisoners in solitary confinement. That is 3 times higher than the normal prisons that taxpayers pay for them to be in prison. Solitary confinement was established in 1829 in Philadelphia for experimentation because officials believed it was a way for
As science has evolved, so have treatments for mental illnesses have over time. The medical model is described as the view that psychological disorders are medical diseases with a biological origin (King, 2010, pg. 413). Abnormal behavior that categorizes some disorders can be impacted by biological factors such as genes, psychological factors such as childhood experiences, and even sociocultural factors such as gender and race (King, 2010). Treatments such as psychosurgery (lobotomy) , drug therapy (pharmaceuticals), electroconclusive therapy, and psychoanalysis are used to treat a wide range of psychological disorders. Back then, the public’s negative views on mental illnesses also went as far to associate with the people who treated it; psychiatrists. “Nunnally (1961) found that the public evaluated professionals who treated mental disorders significantly more negatively than those who treat physical disorders,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). People back then didn’t see the point in “paying to be told that they were crazy”. However, in today’s society, it is now acceptable to seek help from psychiatric professionals; we are seeing more and more people seek mental health treatment. “In terms of facility-based records of utilization (Manderscheid and Henderson 1998), the data suggest that the rate of utilization of professional mental health services has at least doubled and maybe tripled, between the 1950’s and today,” (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000, pg. 189). In the 1950’s, neuroleptic drugs like Thorazine were introduced to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia. These drugs block a neurotransmitter called dopamine from getting to the brain, which in turn reduce schizophrenic symptoms, however there are some side effects such as substantial twitching of the neck, arms, and legs, and even dysphoria or lack of pleasure. (King, 2010, pg.
Mental healthcare has a long and murky past in the United States. In the early 1900s, patients could live in institutions for many years. The treatments and conditions were, at times, inhumane. Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s created programs to protect this vulnerable population from abuse and discrimination. In the last 20 years, mental health advocacy groups and legislators have made gains in bringing attention to the disparity between physical and mental health programs. However, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses continues to be less than optimal. Mental health disparities continue to exist in all areas of the world.
Solitary confinement is a mandated arrangement set up by courts or prisons which seek to punish inmates by the use of isolated confinement. Specifically, solitary confinement can be defined as confinement in which inmates that are held in a single cell for up to twenty-three hours a day without any contact with the exception of prison staff (Shalev, 2011). There are several other terms which refer to solitary confinement such as, administrative segregation, supermax facilities (this is due to the fact that supermax facilities only have solitary confinement), the hotbox, the hole, and the security housing unit (SHU). Solitary confinement is a place where most inmates would prefer not to go. There are many reasons for this.
The United States of America, we have a plethora of laws, those of which may vary in importance; however, the current laws attending to the mentally ill do not suffice. Currently the most justifiable laws for this group are the Constitutional Guidelines, which state
This law allows an individual to keep more of their civil liberties. It cost less than an inpatient commitment. The law has control not only on the individual who needs help but also on the mental health system to give the help. Involuntary commitment is a court order in which an individual with a severe mental illness is order into treatment in an impatient or outpatient hospital. The laws, that deals with the criteria for civil commitment varies from state to state. A dander to self or a danger to others is a standard, but some may result in that the danger must be imminent. The Kendra’s law is a way to try to establish a safety living style for the community for all.
Wouldn’t it be completely irrational to sentence every mentally ill individual to jail purely because they suffered from a mental illness? Often, mentally ill people behave in an eccentric manner and allure the attention of police officers who do not differentiate the mentally ill from mentally stable people and immediately charge them with misdemeanors. There are approximately 300,000 inmates, with the number increasing every year, which suffer from a mental illness and do not receive proper treatment. Jails are not adequately equipped to care for mentally ill inmates, which can lead to an escalation of an inmate’s illness. Society has failed to provide enough social resources for citizens suffering from psychiatric illnesses in its community, transferring mentally unstable individuals between mental institutions and jails, when in fact adequate aid such as providing proper medication, rehabilitation opportunities, and more psychiatric hospitals in communities is a necessity to reconstitute these individuals.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and of that over sixty percent of jail inmates reported having a mental health issue and 316,000 of them are severely mentally ill (Raphael & Stoll, 2013). Correctional facilities in the United States have become the primary mental health institutions today (Adams & Ferrandino, 2008). This imprisonment of the mentally ill in the United States has increased the incarceration rate and has left those individuals medically untreated and emotionally unstable while in jail and after being released. Better housing facilities, medical treatment and psychiatric counseling can be helpful in alleviating their illness as well as upon their release. This paper will explore the increasing incarceration rate of the mentally ill in the jails and prisons of the United States, the lack of medical services available to the mentally ill, the roles of the police, the correctional officers and the community and the revolving door phenomenon (Soderstrom, 2007). It will also review some of the existing and present policies that have been ineffective and present new policies that can be effective with the proper resources and training. The main objective of this paper is to illustrate that the criminalization of the mentally ill has become a public health problem and that our policy should focus more on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
Since there are few regulations and a general lack of state presence in the mental health community, there is a lot of room for error and potential discrimination. On television and in the media we hear the horror stories of nurses manipulating and abusing patients to gain a twisted sense of superiority. Even though some of the stories in the media can be extreme, a majority of patients feel like they have been discriminated against while being treated, in fact “Many patients who seek help for mental health problems report feeling ‘patronized, punished or humiliated’ in their dealings with health professionals” (Christina Pellegrini, 2014). Walking into a health care facility, one expects to get fair, nondiscriminatory treatment, yet many patients feel as if they were punished or humiliated for seeking treatment. This feeling of denigration “[includes] negativity about a patient’s chance of recovery, misattribution of unrelated complaints to a patient’s mental illness and refusal to treat psychiatric symptoms in a medical setting”(2014). While patients are being treated, they are also being scrutinized, and treated as inferior just for having a mental condition. Even while having minimal access around the country to mental health treatment, the treatment itself is plagued with malpractice. This raises many questions about the mental health care systems, as well as the human rights that the patients are entitled to as human beings. While in a hospital, no one should feel like they’re being shamed or patronized because of their condition, regardless of the medical ailment. No matter the stance on this issue, for or against human rights, people in the mental health community deserve to have fair (meaning nonabusive and accessible)
Several states authorize police officers to arrest mentally ill people who have not broken any law. It is argued that this process is a way to promote public order. Hospitals also transfer mentally ill patients to jail in order to deal with the overflow. It is not uncommon for children to be confined to criminal detention centers because there is a lack of facilities for severely mentally ill children. Relying on the criminal justice systems to be surrogate mental health systems conflicts with the basic notions of justice. (Aufderheide,