When Mental Health Treatment Becomes a Violation

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From InDaily: “In the early 2000s when I was detained in a psychiatric hospital I was treated against my will, I was even secluded. You see, I’d felt so ashamed of myself that I made a suicide attempt. The response of the staff was to lock me up, alone, in a tiny, bare room, for hours. And, of course, it just made me feel more ashamed and deserving of death.

To this day I cannot understand why they did this. I had no idea we still treated people this way – I thought it was just something in the movies.

I’ve survived lots of terrible things in my life: childhood sexual abuse, and years of mental health problems that I describe as madness. I’ve survived poverty, discrimination and violence as well. But nothing makes me quite so outraged as the way I was treated in hospital.

I guess that’s because everyone thinks hospitals are such good places, that doctors and nurses are so kind, that people get looked after. Even today, years later, it kind of leaves me astonished that the places where we go at our most distressed, frightened and vulnerable, are the places that can hurt us the most.”

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2 COMMENTS

  1. Tried to post this comment on the article but I need to sign up for 57 different accoints and do a rubics cube in less than ten seconds. I gave up, but if someone can post it there for me I’d love to hear a response from someone who works in an Office of the Chief Psychiatrist. They should know this stuff.
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    Just a note on human rights violations in the area of mental health. How to remove a persons human rights 101, call them a “patient”. Now for example what would be a human rights violation such as torture under the UN Convention against Torture becomes “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction”. So if your not a patient it is torture and a human rights violation, and if your a patient its not.
    Same goes for deprivation of liberty, lawfully sanctioned. Right to consent, anosognosia trumps that one.
    I could go on but basically your human rights are removed the moment you enter a relationship with a doctor. You just dont know it yet

    My point being that the question is posed, why does so much of mental health care violate a persons human rights? It doesn’t, the law is designed to ensure that human rights are removed to enable the ‘treatment’, thus …. no such violation occurs.

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    • You might not like it, can’t say I’m a fan myself, but ….. that’s the law.

      I figured this out when I started wondering why police and the hospital wanted the documents I had back. Me not being a ‘patient’ means human rights violations, fraudulent documents to lawyers means do what ya want to him. Torture becomes treatment. Which doesn’t say a lot for their treatments when taking the wrapper of the law off.

      Still, second line of defense, threaten witnesses and lawyers. Works a treat when they become fearful or the safety of their families. Good guys always win in the end eh?

      Take away a persons human rights and the mask comes off the good guys pretty darn quick. Get to see them for what they really are.

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