> And this really is the heart of it: in an effort to ensure the autonomy and rights of those with mental illness, we created a system where you have to be violent to be taken seriously, and where absent violence the people who love you most and know you best have no recourse for forcing you into treatment when you desperately need it. If ever there’s been a tragedy of good intentions, there it is.
I suppose one could call it a tragedy, but I think a balancing act is a much more accurate way to describe it.
It's a bit like the rules around convicting people of crimes. It's been pretty widely acknowledged that there are many people who escape punishment - particularly of intimate crimes - because a prosecutor probably couldn't meet the standard to convict them.
But on the other hand, there are many innocent people who are currently being punished for crimes they didn't commit.
The more we try to suppress type 1 errors, the more type 2 errors we get. And vice versa.
In the case of mental health, sure - there are probably lots of people who desperately need care and can't get it because they can't be committed. But there's also a long history of people preying on others by getting them committed.
I'm not going to pretend that I know if we have struck the correct balance; just that it is a balance. And moving the dial 100% in one direction or the other is the wrong answer.
I suppose one could call it a tragedy, but I think a balancing act is a much more accurate way to describe it.
It's a bit like the rules around convicting people of crimes. It's been pretty widely acknowledged that there are many people who escape punishment - particularly of intimate crimes - because a prosecutor probably couldn't meet the standard to convict them.
But on the other hand, there are many innocent people who are currently being punished for crimes they didn't commit.
The more we try to suppress type 1 errors, the more type 2 errors we get. And vice versa.
In the case of mental health, sure - there are probably lots of people who desperately need care and can't get it because they can't be committed. But there's also a long history of people preying on others by getting them committed.
I'm not going to pretend that I know if we have struck the correct balance; just that it is a balance. And moving the dial 100% in one direction or the other is the wrong answer.