Compulsory Mental Illness

The conclusion had is there is no one solution for all of these individual cases however the author does state “The goal is to reach a balance between the rights of the patient to treatment and the responsibility to ensure public safety. The balance between patients’ rights, the right to treatment, and public safety is taken into account with the “treatment years” approach.” (Melamed). This balance between punishment and treatment will largely depend on the severity of the crime committed, and differ from case to case. The term “treatment years” refers to the duration of time spent with medical personnel helping subdue the condition expressed by the patient before they are deemed ready to be a part of society once more. The implication of juries that are more informed on the topics of mental health and are able to view that in the context of sentencing could also benefit a suitable and more understanding sentencing of jail and treatment time. The context of murder with punishment and treatment is more difficult to find a balance with than other less severe crimes. The perpetrator has shown the ability to commit the worst crime imaginable and has demonstrated their danger to society and capability to damage lives. With this taken into account punishment for the perpetrator needs to be

The lack of treatment for mental illnesses — due partly from the stigma with which it is associated with — comes with a number of public issues: economically,

Hippocrates was the first to recognize that mental illness was due to ‘disturbed physiology’ as opposed to ‘displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession’. It was not until about one thousand years later that the first place designated for the mentally ill came to be in 15th century Spain. Before the 15th century, it was largely up to individual’s families to care for them. By the 17th century, society was ‘often housing them with handicapped people, vagrants, and delinquents. Those considered insane are increasingly treated inhumanely, often chained to walls and kept in dungeons’. There are great strides for the medical treatments for the mentally

Furthermore, tremendous advances have been made in the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses in the recent decades. Nowadays, someone with a mental illness is treated with respect, just like every other person, because, in fact, everyone is equal. Society’s goals today are to treat and support the mentally ill individuals enough so they can live in

While stigma may not necessarily be a cause of a person’s mental disorder, it can certainly contribute to the complication and perpetuation of their illness. The effect of stigma goes well beyond just the patient and provides a commentary on society’s overall level of intolerance of those who are considered different from the majority. By recognizing the level of stigma that exists, perhaps we can alter that behavior and gravitate towards a more productive attitude towards mental illness.

Within the past two decades there’s been a revival in efforts to reduce stigmatization attached to mental illnesses. It was concluded that if mental illnesses were perceived better as ‘real’ diseases by the public that stigma would go down greatly. Reports proposed the idea that better scientific understanding of mental illnesses by the general public could greatly reduce stigma. Stigma is intensely rooted in social and cultural norms it’s patterns devalue and dehumanize groups of individuals within society (in this case mentally ill people). Stigma constructs barriers for individuals, barriers that limit a person’s abilities to have equal opportunities for employment, safe housing, health care and social relationships.Efforts to reduce stigma in recent years have

Although about 450 million people in the world currently are suffering from a mental illness, many untreated, the topic still remains taboo in modern society (Mental Health). For years, people with mental illnesses have been shut away or institutionalized, and despite cultural progression in many areas, mental illnesses are still shamed and rarely brought to light outside of the psychiatric community. The many different forms in which mental illness can occur are incredibly prevalent in the world today, and there is a substantial debate about the way that they should be handled. Some people are of the opinion that mental illness is merely a variance in perception and that it either can be fixed through therapy or should not be treated at

In the eyes of medical personnel it is an assumption that antipsychotic drugs could compensate for mental illness, which typically takes long periods of time to thoroughly diagnose, and thus there is no incentive to attempt to correct for the mental illness since there is no guarantee of recovery. The attempt to medicate the offender in order to terminate his life is basically a waste of the tax payer’s money. The decision should be made to either label him as mentally ill, medicate him in order to make him better so that he might live a sane life or to terminate his life due to the extremities of his crime. The main goal of capital punishment is the forfeiture of the offenders participation in society by means of termination of life and that terminating a life does not require any special condition to undergo there is no conclusive need to ensure the healthy condition of an offender who is subject to termination of life. If the health of the offender is irrelevant then it can also be stated that the current state of mental illness has no bearing on the proceedings and there is no need to correct this situation prior to execution with a medication. (Grinfeld, M,

Through the course of time, mental illnesses have always been in existence due to varying factors and causes. However, as time has passed, the perceptions and available treatments for mental illnesses have also changed as new technology was developed. By looking at the treatments and perceptions of mental illnesses in the early 20th century, we can learn how to properly treat and diagnose not only mental disorders but also other conditions as well as show us the importance of review boards and controlled clinical trials.

Mental illness can change a persons’ capacity to make rational and safe decisions, often creating a contradiction in actions to their core ethics and beliefs (Mind, Mental health crisis care: physical restraint in crisis report, June 2013). David Bennett had suffered with schizophrenia for nearly 20 years, leading to aggressive changes in his mood. On the evening of David’s death he had an incident with another patient, which caused him to become angry, leading to a physical altercation,

This approach has shown different ways in treating mental disorders, and in doing so have shown inadequacies and ethical implications that are both positive and negative in their therapeutic perspectives. The psychodynamic model also suggests that the individuals are not really responsible for their own mental disorders, this is because these disorders depend on unconscious processes which individuals have no control. However with both of these approaches suggesting that the individual has no responsibility may carry the

    It is obvious to the TV viewer that under the banners of compassion and autonomy, some are calling for legal recognition of a "right to suicide" and societal acceptance of "physician-assisted suicide." Suicide proponents evoke the image of someone facing unendurable suffering who calmly and rationally decides death is better than life in such a state. They argue that society should respect and defer to the freedom of choice such people exercise in asking to be killed. This essay intends to debunk this point of view on the basis of mental illness among those patients involved.

In today’s current medical models there is belief that people who behave strangely are labeled as “sick”. Another is that some people cannot control their outcome of having an illness. Because of this it is up to us to have a sort of responsibility towards and over them. The type of treatments that these people need are only supposed to

However a negative ethical issue is that genetic explanations of mental illness may result in relatives becoming anxious and such explanations also raise questions and concerns about the use of sterilisation to prevent the continuation of such disorders. There are a number of other concerns about the unfavourable ethical consequences of this model of abnormality. For example, there is the assumption resulting from the model that the mentally ill aren’t responsible fro their actions which may lead to a loss of rights, such as the right to consent to treatment or institutionalisation. The assumption that there is always a biological underlying cause for mental disorder may be incorrect and therefore lead to the wrong diagnosis or treatment being given. Heather (1976) suggests that the basis of defining abnormality is often governed by social and moral considerations rather than biological – thus the inclusion of psychosexual disorders such as paedophilia.

Western medicine values individual autonomy, to an extent. That extent is measured by an individual’s ability to think rationally. But, what does rationality mean in the face of complex medical decision-making? What does autonomy mean when a doctor deems an individual with a mental illness lacks capacity and needs treatment? The purpose of this essay is not to persuade readers that individuals with mental illness do not need support at times. Rather, the purpose is to make readers question the criteria for involuntary hospitalization. Through defining capacity and exploring what capacity means for individuals who are mentally ill, I argue that it is not ethically justifiable for mental illness to be a criterion for involuntary hospitalization.