re: #21 Romantic Heretic

By that standard I’d be in jail. I was, until I got treated, in no position to make a rational decision. If I’d been institutionalized against my will it wouldn’t have helped. It would have just made me sicker.

Why do you say you’e be in jail? Hospitalization is not jail.

And why are you so sure that an involuntary intervention would necessarily have been unsuccessful? Apparently you did not need one since you sought treatment by yourself ultimately (?), but for people who can’t make that leap themselves, should society turn their back on them? My best friend’s daughter (17 years old) was placed in a mental hospital for three weeks very much against her will this last year and has made remarkable progress. What is it about the magical age 18 that means society should turn its back on treating people so incapacitated that they can’t seek treatment?

I am not advocating a return to abusive practices from the past or the Soviet Union. But perhaps in attempting to address former problematic issues the pendulum has swung too far in our society. To me it seems foolish to enshrine “age 18” as a cut-off for being able to intervene in peoples’ mental healthcare when serious conditions like schizophrenia typically don’t even manifest themselves until early adulthood. We need to look forward for a balanced approach to assist people incapacitated by mental illness.