Never been committed or had to go through the process myself, but I do have some second-hand knowledge from my work as a 911 dispatcher.
Most important to keep in mind is that the specific laws and processes are going to vary depending on what state or country you live in, who can initiate it, what’s involved in the process, how long they can be held, what the process is is to extend that hold if needed, etc. will all vary a bit.
Most commonly, the requirements include something like the person must be a danger danger to themselves or others, and the relevant law will likely spell out how that is determined.
In general, an involuntary commitment should be a last resort. Probably not surprisingly someone who doesn’t want to be there probably won’t try very hard to keep up with their treatment, and since they can usually only be held for a few days without taking extra steps to extend it, they may be able to keep themselves out of trouble for just long enough to get released and then go right back to whatever they were doing to get committed in the first place. If you can somehow convince them to go of their own free will, they’re probably going to be a lot more cooperative, and sometimes, depending on the exact circumstances, it can actually be harder for them to leave before they’re better when they go voluntarily than when it’s involuntary.
Thanks for that. That clears up a lot of what I wasn’t sure about. I’m curious, from your experience in that job, did you ever feel like certain steps in that process could’ve been different to better help people? Genuinely curious
Again, things are going to vary from one place or a person to another and I’m afraid there probably isn’t a simple, satisfying, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s a lot of room for improvement at basically every level with mental healthcare, though it’s pretty hard to pick one or even a couple things and say “do this one thing differently and things will be better” because each of those one little things tends to lead straight down a rabbit hole of 10,000 other things that would also need to change for it to work.
Some very broad categories of things I’d like to see improved
More funding, resources, training, etc. there’s only so many psych hospitals, so many beds, doctors, nurses, etc. so even if we could somehow funnel everyone who really needs treatment down a path towards getting it, there’s really no way for them all to get it. We need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to access high quality mental healthcare.
A whole lot of education, public awareness, societal changes, etc. need to happen. There’s still a whole lot of stigma and taboos about mental health issues and treatment. People don’t know what’s involved, are afraid of getting branded as crazy, don’t know what resources are available to them, how to access them, what their strengths and limitations are, they can’t afford it, a long stay in a psych hospital may mean losing their jobs or their home. Damn near every night I get a call for a domestic where I hear one of the parties yelling at the other that they’re going to get them committed, and often there’s no real sign that anyone involved actually has any kind of mental health issue, they’re mostly just idiots or assholes, so it’s usually an empty threat and paints the picture of treatment being some sort of punishment or a weapon to use against someone, and that sort of thinking really damages the reputation and efficacy of mental healthcare.
There probably need to be new categories of healthcare created, or if they do already actually exist, they need to be expanded. I can’t tell you how many calls I get a night from people who clearly have some kind of psych issues, but wouldn’t meet the bar of being a danger by any reasonable definition. I could probably rattle off a dozen names and addresses off the top of my head of people that I speak to almost every shift who probably really need to be in a psych hospital for a while to get themselves straightened out, but since they’re in no way dangerous, our hands are kind of tied, and the best we can do is offer them a mental health crisis line they can speak to, or send a cop out to check on them, make sure they’re ok, maybe talk to them for a while or leave them some pamphlets or business cards or something for resources they can try and hope they take the next step themselves, or at the very least tell them to stop calling 911 (which doesn’t really have any teeth, no one really wants to go through the paperwork and court hearings and such to get them in trouble for abusing the 911 system, I’ve only heard of it actually happening once in these kinds of cases in the 5 years I’ve been working here, and in their minds they’re calling about an actual emergency, and we don’t want to discourage them from calling if/when there actually is something going on, it’s happened before that they’ve actually called in a real incident) so there needs to be some sort of middle ground between hauling them off kicking and screaming to be committed and just making suggestions and hoping they follow through with them, and I don’t really know what that middle ground is.
I don’t understand. Is that a book and “dhcmrlchtdj[underscore][underscore]” represents something from the book?
The reason I ask is it sounds like a random bunch of letters to me. Makes me think troll account. Makes me think super serious topic being discussed on a playful whim to map us out culturally.
Sorry if I’m seeing this wrong. It’s just such a heavy topic I’d rather know I’m interacting with a real person.
Committing a person is an extremely serious action which does violate their rights. Much like conscripting soldiers into a war, or killing an innocent person to save five innocent people, it’s a human rights violation that shouldn’t be discussed lightly and should only be considered when there is literally no other option.
So far it sounds like your target “thinks he’s being targeted”. Which he is, by us in this very thread. So aside from having a healthy intuition about when he’s in danger, what’s the mental health situation that warrants violating this person’s rights for his own safety or others’?
Sorry if this comes across as overly hostile. That’s not my intention. I’ve just seen too many people’s lives ruined by being involuntarily committed. And I don’t like discussing such drastic moral hazards with a username that looks like random letters followed by some underscores.
You’re being really critical here for no good reason, it almost feels like you’re the one with a troll account.
You could clear up your confusion about the username by a quick Google search. The library of babel is a story Jorge Louis Borges, about a vast library that contains every possible combination of letters and words, and if you Google “dhcmrlchtdj,” you can see that it’s one combination of letters that he specifically calls out to illustrate that point.
And like you said, an involuntary commitment is a serious issue to contemplate and a sensitive topic for a lot of people, I think it’s pretty understandable that someone may not want to share a lot of details about what their friend is going through.
Never been committed or had to go through the process myself, but I do have some second-hand knowledge from my work as a 911 dispatcher.
Most important to keep in mind is that the specific laws and processes are going to vary depending on what state or country you live in, who can initiate it, what’s involved in the process, how long they can be held, what the process is is to extend that hold if needed, etc. will all vary a bit.
Most commonly, the requirements include something like the person must be a danger danger to themselves or others, and the relevant law will likely spell out how that is determined.
In general, an involuntary commitment should be a last resort. Probably not surprisingly someone who doesn’t want to be there probably won’t try very hard to keep up with their treatment, and since they can usually only be held for a few days without taking extra steps to extend it, they may be able to keep themselves out of trouble for just long enough to get released and then go right back to whatever they were doing to get committed in the first place. If you can somehow convince them to go of their own free will, they’re probably going to be a lot more cooperative, and sometimes, depending on the exact circumstances, it can actually be harder for them to leave before they’re better when they go voluntarily than when it’s involuntary.
Thanks for that. That clears up a lot of what I wasn’t sure about. I’m curious, from your experience in that job, did you ever feel like certain steps in that process could’ve been different to better help people? Genuinely curious
Again, things are going to vary from one place or a person to another and I’m afraid there probably isn’t a simple, satisfying, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s a lot of room for improvement at basically every level with mental healthcare, though it’s pretty hard to pick one or even a couple things and say “do this one thing differently and things will be better” because each of those one little things tends to lead straight down a rabbit hole of 10,000 other things that would also need to change for it to work.
Some very broad categories of things I’d like to see improved
More funding, resources, training, etc. there’s only so many psych hospitals, so many beds, doctors, nurses, etc. so even if we could somehow funnel everyone who really needs treatment down a path towards getting it, there’s really no way for them all to get it. We need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to access high quality mental healthcare.
A whole lot of education, public awareness, societal changes, etc. need to happen. There’s still a whole lot of stigma and taboos about mental health issues and treatment. People don’t know what’s involved, are afraid of getting branded as crazy, don’t know what resources are available to them, how to access them, what their strengths and limitations are, they can’t afford it, a long stay in a psych hospital may mean losing their jobs or their home. Damn near every night I get a call for a domestic where I hear one of the parties yelling at the other that they’re going to get them committed, and often there’s no real sign that anyone involved actually has any kind of mental health issue, they’re mostly just idiots or assholes, so it’s usually an empty threat and paints the picture of treatment being some sort of punishment or a weapon to use against someone, and that sort of thinking really damages the reputation and efficacy of mental healthcare.
There probably need to be new categories of healthcare created, or if they do already actually exist, they need to be expanded. I can’t tell you how many calls I get a night from people who clearly have some kind of psych issues, but wouldn’t meet the bar of being a danger by any reasonable definition. I could probably rattle off a dozen names and addresses off the top of my head of people that I speak to almost every shift who probably really need to be in a psych hospital for a while to get themselves straightened out, but since they’re in no way dangerous, our hands are kind of tied, and the best we can do is offer them a mental health crisis line they can speak to, or send a cop out to check on them, make sure they’re ok, maybe talk to them for a while or leave them some pamphlets or business cards or something for resources they can try and hope they take the next step themselves, or at the very least tell them to stop calling 911 (which doesn’t really have any teeth, no one really wants to go through the paperwork and court hearings and such to get them in trouble for abusing the 911 system, I’ve only heard of it actually happening once in these kinds of cases in the 5 years I’ve been working here, and in their minds they’re calling about an actual emergency, and we don’t want to discourage them from calling if/when there actually is something going on, it’s happened before that they’ve actually called in a real incident) so there needs to be some sort of middle ground between hauling them off kicking and screaming to be committed and just making suggestions and hoping they follow through with them, and I don’t really know what that middle ground is.
What does your username mean?
From the Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges
I don’t understand. Is that a book and “dhcmrlchtdj[underscore][underscore]” represents something from the book?
The reason I ask is it sounds like a random bunch of letters to me. Makes me think troll account. Makes me think super serious topic being discussed on a playful whim to map us out culturally.
Sorry if I’m seeing this wrong. It’s just such a heavy topic I’d rather know I’m interacting with a real person.
Committing a person is an extremely serious action which does violate their rights. Much like conscripting soldiers into a war, or killing an innocent person to save five innocent people, it’s a human rights violation that shouldn’t be discussed lightly and should only be considered when there is literally no other option.
So far it sounds like your target “thinks he’s being targeted”. Which he is, by us in this very thread. So aside from having a healthy intuition about when he’s in danger, what’s the mental health situation that warrants violating this person’s rights for his own safety or others’?
Sorry if this comes across as overly hostile. That’s not my intention. I’ve just seen too many people’s lives ruined by being involuntarily committed. And I don’t like discussing such drastic moral hazards with a username that looks like random letters followed by some underscores.
You’re being really critical here for no good reason, it almost feels like you’re the one with a troll account.
You could clear up your confusion about the username by a quick Google search. The library of babel is a story Jorge Louis Borges, about a vast library that contains every possible combination of letters and words, and if you Google “dhcmrlchtdj,” you can see that it’s one combination of letters that he specifically calls out to illustrate that point.
And like you said, an involuntary commitment is a serious issue to contemplate and a sensitive topic for a lot of people, I think it’s pretty understandable that someone may not want to share a lot of details about what their friend is going through.