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Comment by MaupitiBlue | Hacker News Reader

Why do we let the insane roam free? Perhaps if the insane were properly secured, they wouldn’t be getting shot by the police when they have an episode?

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Among other reasons, there is a stigma against mental illness in the US, which prefers to see it as a moral failing correlated with class or race than a disease like any other, which makes funding treatment for mental illness politically more difficult to justify than bigger prisons and more heavily armed police.

I hereby deem you insane. Now what?

Detention on psychiatric grounds was a widespread repression tactic in the Soviet Union and continues to be used in "democratic" Russia. To prevent such abuses, any deprivation of liberty must be justified by a clear and immediate threat to life and subject to stringent safeguards and oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...

Exactly! This is a discussion from the 19th century, if not earlier -- just read The Woman in White (or watch the recent excellent BBC adaptation).

You get locked up. If, sometime in the future, a cure for schizophrenia is developed, out you go. But otherwise, you’re just a ticking timebomb until that day where you go off the meds and explode.

You get locked up

No, what the parent is getting at is, you should say "I get locked up." You personally, whether you think you're schizophrenic or not. Are you happy with this situation? If you think you're sane, how do you prove it and how do you get out?

This isn't an abstract question. Locking healthy people up in asylums is something that has happened many times in history.

> But otherwise, you’re just a ticking timebomb until that day where you go off the meds and explode.

You're linking mental illness to violence, but we know that's wrong. Mental ill health does not predict violent behaviour.

Violence is common. Mental illness is common. Some violent people also happen to have mental illness, but there's little evidence that mental illness causes violence, and if it does it's in a small number of people.

I can't tell if you're a troll or you just show an utter lack of empathy. Which ironically is a symptom of sociopathy and would warrant a lockup according to your views.

Psychiatric drugs are too profitable, and sanitariums threatens the constant invention and sale of expensive psychiatric drugs.

Although in my opinion nobody should ever be involuntarily committed. They should have to commit a crime, and there should be special prisons for the mentally ill. Otherwise consent of the patient or a legal guardian should be required. It’s sort of a slippery slope to allow people to be declared insane by the state and locked away with little or no physical evidence.

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