Monday, September 11, 2023

Does Malis-with-malice torture people?

State psychiatrists like Malis-with-malice usually don't administer forced drugs themselves, and when they petition a court for an order for forced drugging, they often don't even know who will actually do it to the patient. (I'm quite certain this is contrary to the intent of the law, by the way.)

But the MD psychiatrist on a clinical unit has so much important paperwork to fill out and other bureaucratic nonsense to pursue, that he rarely has time for an actual, live patient. 

Alternatively, guys like Malis-with-malice might not want to see forced druggings, because they are occasionally ugly, like torture, totally contrary to the whole idea of medical help.

The model of beneficent "treatment" which predictably helps people to recover from mental illnesses sure doesn't seem to apply when a "patient" violently resists drugging and must be subdued by force. I don't know how many patients do violently resist, but I might admire those who do, and I'd like to think I would fight to the death myself.

Certainly, if we find ourselves physically ganging up on someone we are supposed to help, holding them down so a needle can be forced into their body by some goon (not the "doctor") against their screaming protest, it is darkly laughable to to count that as a victory for modern medicine or the rule of rational law! 

Forced drugging reveals abject failure, and its victims don't come back to thank us for merciful cures. Rather, they protest, and sue, and die.

Malis-with-malice does not act like any scientist or any doctor, when he orders someone else to brutalize his patient, and then doesn't even stick around to watch. At best, he shows himself as a pathetic bureaucrat in a corrupt, incompetent, byzantine state system; a cog in the wheels of a cruel leviathan. The complexity of so-called "diagnosis" and "treatment" of mental disorders is fully legendary in our culture these days. No one who actually looks at it imagines it to be a good, just, or brilliant thing. None of us can be proud to pay our taxes for Elgin Mental Health Center.

Unfortunately, pointing to obvious faults in the system doesn't tell us what to do about people who insist upon pissing off the neighbors. If there's a person we don't like, can't understand, don't know what to do about... well, we should at least be honest. We shouldn't indulge in the pretense that Malis-with-malice knows what he's doing and only means to provide the best care he can for his poor, crazy patient. 

Malis-with-malice can do nothing but parrot pages of drug information and nuthouse "policies" which he chooses, or invents, for some opportunistic excuse. Malis-with-malice is not capable of helping another human being!

When a court chooses to ignore the reality of psychiatry's coercion and abject failure, it should at least require that any "doctor" who asks for an involuntary medication order must be present to see what happens when the order is carried out. If there is ugliness and violence, that must be confronted as an inherent part of the risk/benefit equation. 

Nobody should be allowed to sit behind a desk down the hall or down the street and pretend they don't know. It's like the death penalty: maybe we'll be willing to kill a person who has been evil enough, but we only have that natural right if we can kill them ourselves, even with our own hands.

It's funny how students of nursing or law are happy to sit in on court hearings for involuntary medication petitions, and judges and nuthouse administrators are happy to let them do so.

Nobody ever watches what happens later. That's not allowed. but It should be required.

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