Beds in Mental Wards
May. 27th, 2018 07:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenThere was an article in the Science/Health section of Tuesday’s Washington Post about the shortage of beds in mental hospitals and mental wards. As a result, people who are having psychotic breaks, or are otherwise mentally nonfunctional, are often kept for hours or days in hospital emergency rooms, which are not good or restful places for them, waiting for a bed to be vacated. I believe that this is a real problem, and there probably is a need for more places in mental wards.
And yet, reading it, I could not help but remember a post I had recently read in Quora, which was not the only account I have read of wrongful psychiatric imprisonment. The poster gave an account of how a psychiatrist had begun from the assumption that she was suicidally depressed, which she was not. The psychiatrist had treated her unkempt appearance as evidence of mental illness, when actually she had been kept in a hospital emergency room for two days, with no chance to take a shower or shampoo her hair. The psychiatrist refused to listen to her, and tried to press her to agree to “voluntary” commitment, or else she would be involuntarily committed. She refused to agree, and was involuntarily committed, and then kept in a mental hospital for weeks, and dosed with lithium and other drugs. At first, she insisted that she was not suicidal, and then gave up, pretended that she was, and let herself be “cured.”
It would free up at least some beds in mental hospitals to release people who are not crazy, and don’t belong there. Granted, in some cases, it’s hard to know who those people are, but in other cases, people have been locked up for frivolous reasons, or based either on bogus accusations from third parties, or presumptions of insanity by psychiatrists acting sua sponte.
If I were in a state legislature, and a bill was introduced to pay for more beds in mental wards, I would make my support for it contingent on provisions guaranteeing involuntary patients the right to an actual judicial hearing within 48 hours, and otherwise guarding against abuses.
And yet, reading it, I could not help but remember a post I had recently read in Quora, which was not the only account I have read of wrongful psychiatric imprisonment. The poster gave an account of how a psychiatrist had begun from the assumption that she was suicidally depressed, which she was not. The psychiatrist had treated her unkempt appearance as evidence of mental illness, when actually she had been kept in a hospital emergency room for two days, with no chance to take a shower or shampoo her hair. The psychiatrist refused to listen to her, and tried to press her to agree to “voluntary” commitment, or else she would be involuntarily committed. She refused to agree, and was involuntarily committed, and then kept in a mental hospital for weeks, and dosed with lithium and other drugs. At first, she insisted that she was not suicidal, and then gave up, pretended that she was, and let herself be “cured.”
It would free up at least some beds in mental hospitals to release people who are not crazy, and don’t belong there. Granted, in some cases, it’s hard to know who those people are, but in other cases, people have been locked up for frivolous reasons, or based either on bogus accusations from third parties, or presumptions of insanity by psychiatrists acting sua sponte.
If I were in a state legislature, and a bill was introduced to pay for more beds in mental wards, I would make my support for it contingent on provisions guaranteeing involuntary patients the right to an actual judicial hearing within 48 hours, and otherwise guarding against abuses.
