Hacker News Reader

Comment by trekky1700 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, even when there's money for medical attention, these people still exist. In Toronto we still have people like that, though from what I heard, less of them. Here, a man like that would've had access to all the medical help he needed at no cost, but there's no way, apart from arresting him and then getting a judge to agree he's a danger to force it upon him. Without revoking his rights, there's really no way to force help upon him. And definitely no way for Twitter or Google to do it.

View on HN

Absolutely. It is a sad Catch-22 that many of the people who need help the most do not receive it because they do not help themselves, but their inability to help themselves is part of what they need help with in the first place.

Waiting for the inevitable arrest is obviously unsatisfactory, but I don't know how you can improve this process without trampling on rights.

As ideal as it may seem, people are wary of government having too much control over forcing people into mental health treatment. Unfortunately, as it turns out this is for good reason, because even in recent history there's been some pretty horrifying abuse of that power.

Yeah, some of the studies of students checking themselves in and then trying to get out (perfectly sane students) are nightmarish.

How do you PROVE you aren't faking "sanity". shiver It gives the people in charge unchecked god like power over other human beings.

On the other hand, someone walking up to a stranger and punching them is a good indication of someone not getting some help they need.

Oh yea of course, there are always cases that are clear black-and-white, but the same could be said about due process. If fifty people watch a guy stab someone to death, a police investigation and full trial probably isn't quite as necessary; that doesn't mean due process shouldn't exist, because the job of determining the boundary for "obviously guilty (or obviously insane, in the original example)" needs to have some formalism around it.

I'm not even saying that the government _shouldn't_ be involved in assessing mental health, just that people are wary of it for a good reason (in the same way that people are wary of any form of testing as a requirement for voting, because of the way that it was so horribly abused in the past).

I don't think I disagree with any of that.

Well, if he punched somebody, then arresting him is an available option...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com