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originally posted by: dragonridr
a reply to: infolurker
Problem is once your comited by a judge to a mental institution its near impossible to get out. I can see the state spending thus to avoid having to pay for their stay in a mental institute. They might only get a couple of years in prison but could end up spending decades under doctors care.
In the United States alone, there are approximately one million civil commitments per year, that is, more than 2,500 per day. (The practice is common in all advanced societies.) This figure does not include the countless times minors are assaulted with unwanted psychiatric interventions. Depriving defendants of their right to trial by declaring them mentally unfit and depriving them of finite prison sentences by declaring them not guilty by reason of insanity are two other obvious and important instances in a long list of psychiatric violations of human rights.
The reactions of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to my likening involuntary psychiatry to involuntary servitude and organized psychiatry ("psychiatric slavery") to chattel slavery is not my concern here. Instead, my concern is to suggest -- more pointedly than I have done in the past -- that libertarians, as self-defined guardians of individual liberty and responsibility, have a duty to confront and articulate their position on psychiatric coercions and excuses, all of which rest on the concept of mental illness as squarely as the beliefs and practices of theistic religions rest on the concept of god.
The issue before us is whether psychiatric coercions and excuses are -- by the light of what we know today -- virtuous or wicked, praiseworthy or blameworthy, social practices. Where do libertarians stand on the practice of depriving innocent people of liberty in the name of "mental illness"? I believe it behooves libertarians to candidly acknowledge whether they support or oppose statist-psychiatric interventions and articulate the reasons for their position.
Psychiatric slavery -- like chattel slavery -- is an either / or issue. A person either supports it or opposes it. Tertium non datur.
originally posted by: Teddy916
originally posted by: CharlieSpeirs
This is just wrong.
Sly demonisation and up front neglect.
This should be illegal.
I agree. Florida can be using the money to for better reasons. Like helping mentally ill people acquiring jobs and housing.