Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Involuntary Commitment

How easy is it to be committed? Very easy. In the United States alone, a person is involuntarily incarcerated in a psychiatric facility every 1 ¼ minutes. How therapeutic is involuntary incarceration? Consider the following examples of committal abuse.

A psychiatrist committed Ruchla “Rose” Zinger, a 64-year-old Holocaust survivor with an understandable history of mental instability, to an institution. He relied solely on reports by family members. To carry out the involuntary commitment, police broke down the door to her house, handcuffed her and shoved her down the stairs. She suffered a heart attack and died.

In 1999, psychiatrists in Germany involuntarily committed a 79-year-old woman because neighbors reported she had acted “strangely.” Despite her long-term diabetes and liver, kidney and heart conditions, she was prescribed between five and 20 times the normal dosage of powerful tranquilizers. Six days later the woman had to be rushed to a hospital emergency room, where she died.

Doctors reported she had needed urgent medical attention at least a day earlier and the autopsy showed that she died of breathing difficulties—a complication of tranquilizers.

An 8-year-old boy from Massachusetts, who suffered from epilepsy, was rushed by his parents to a hospital for a medication adjustment after he experienced hallucinations. Instead of adjusting his medication, staff committed him to a psychiatric facility. It took the frantic parents an entire day to secure his transfer to a medical hospital for appropriate care.

Dana Davis was slammed face down on his living room floor and handcuffed by police before his horrified wife and six-year-old son. This occurred after he walked out of the office of a psychiatrist he didn’t like. As he was leaving, she asked, “Can you promise that you will not commit suicide between now and your next meeting?” Jokingly he quipped, “I’m no soothsayer!” Thirty minutes later, the three police officers were taking him to the hospital where he was found not suicidal and was released.

Seventy-four-year-old William, suffering congestive heart failure and reliant on an oxygen tank to breathe, said “Yes” when his homecare nurse asked if he felt depressed. Within 30 minutes, an attendant from a local psychiatric hospital arrived at his home and when William refused to go with him, called the police. They arrived, unhooked the oxygen tank, searched him for weapons, shoved him into a police car and drove him to the psychiatric facility. With no examination, William was admitted as “suicidal,” and held for 72 hours involuntarily, for “observation.” The next day a psychiatrist said he needed to be detained another 48 hours and possibly as long as six months. William was “saved” only by the onset of a heart attack. He was transferred to a general hospital where a medical doctor determined that William had no need for psychiatric confinement. William’s health insurance was billed $4,000 for four days in the psychiatric facility (even though he had only been there two days and not by choice), and he was billed $800 personally.

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