This came up in my health care forum.
Right now, you can legally detain someone medically when they are a danger to themselves or others for up to 72hrs. The details vary by state, but this is how we lock down individuals trying to suicide or someone mentally off the rails making threats of violence.
This variation on that law would also make opposition to Trump qualify.
Civil commitment can follow as with individuals who have profound mental illness and are not safe to be out in the world.
This is the loudest scream that democracy is dead short of hauling people out into the street and shooting them.
It’s important to note the police are currently the people who bring individuals in for the 72hr mental health holds.
Quite literally in my case.
PTSD from “psychiatric care” is pretty difficult to deal with (and understudied. fascinating how PTSD only garners you empathy and understanding if you’re a combat rep, despite the fact that most with PTSD do have it from sexual abuse and possibly inpatient experiences - suicide rates skyrocket after involuntary commitment, but why do any form of investigation into something that might hurt profits?)
If you’re afraid of wasps, you aren’t expected to go ask a wasp how to deal with it. If, however, you experience severe abuse at the hands of mental health professionals and you live in an area where mental health care = the police, getting any form of help is pretty difficult.
Especially when they consider your gender identity and sexuality as manifestations of mental illness/further evidence that they don’t need to look into the tech beating the shit out of you.
You’re speaking directly to me. I am a veteran with PTSD. It was from sexual assault and the accompanying involuntary mental health lock up after I went to the doctor to seek help with my sleep.
I was told I could not claim the sexual assault because I would have been kicked out for sleeping with someone that was married and for being gay (this was before they repealed don’t ask don’t tell)…… I would have been court martial and thrown out they said.
Lucky for me I’m an infantry marine with a combat tour so my PTSD gets assumed to be combat and I don’t have to explain much to anyone. But fuck, how am I supposed to go and talk this out with doctors that I don’t trust? I don’t trust the system at all. I was let down by low command (squad), middle command(battalion command), and high command (regimental command). I was then failed by the nurse (corpsman), PCP (battalion doctor), psych (some fuckface colonel), his nurse (another corpsman), and the facilities personnel (nurses, doctors, psychiatrists).
And to compound on all this, I was involuntarily locked up when I was 14(??) because my parents let me get so fucked up that I blacked out and they called cops saying they didn’t know what was wrong with me……. What was wrong was that I was 14 and handed booze and pills…… the fuck did they expect?!? Obviously both times I ended up getting released but that doesn’t remove the inhumanity of it all. The treatment as if you are “other” to them. Like a dog or some shit.
So I’ve had trauma from psych wards from adolescence and also my time in the marines.
Sorry for the rant. Just triggered so much inside me with your comment.