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Involuntary CommitmentHow easy is it to be committed to a psychiatric facility? It’s so easy in the United States that a person is involuntarily incarcerated every 1¼ minutes. The same situation applies broadly throughout the world.
PUBLICATIONS AND INFORMATION Commitment laws have been misused for every motive imaginable: financial, sexual, business advantage, inheritance, political suppression, and even to maintain governmental secrecy. LEGAL DECISIONS Read about two significant legal decisions. One, where a court awarded a man $1.1 million for being falsely imprisoned for seven days in a Pennsylvania medical center, and another where a man was awarded nearly $1 million for being involuntarily committed and injected with psychiatric drugs after going to the hospital for a minor medical procedure. RECOMMENDED READING Dr. Thomas Szasz, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, is a prolific writer about involuntary commitment. He says: “It is dishonest to pretend that caring coercively for the mentally ill invariably helps him, and that abstaining from such coercion is tantamount to ‘withholding treatment’ from him…all history teaches us to beware of benefactors who deprive their beneficiaries of liberty....There is neither justification nor need for involuntary psychiatric interventions....” |
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