| Should a schizophrenic who goes off his meds and commits a crime be held accountable for them, or is he legally insane? |
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Should a schizophrenic who goes off his meds and commits a crime be held accountable for them, or is he legally insane?
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Asked 3 years ago
by TheSheep  United States |
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Woolly horned ruminant mammal.
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| 3 Points |
I've often wondered that, but your questions kinda jelled it in my mind.
First off - the guy is insane. And any doctor will tell you it takes awhile to find the right drug and the right dosage to work. They start off with the most popular in the most common dosage and change it from there. If a drug is not working properly, then you end up with a schizophrenic who, although medicated, isn't medicated properly. They think they're okay without the med, but if they THINK they're okay without it, that means they are NOT okay and don't understand the problem.
In short - only insane people think they're sane. So if a person is insane, and begins to think they're sane enough not to take their drugs that means they've become insane again. And thus we have an insane person who commits a crime because of mental illness.
Did that make sense? uh oh. I've gone insane. (lol)
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[1 point] 3 years ago by deleted user ReplyOne thing we do know is that everyone subjected to anti-psychotic medication tries to quit them. Apparently, the effects are more unpleasant than the insanity or dementia that causes their need.
So the real question--both morally and legally, as intent is an element of any serious crime, which is why manslaughter and murder are different offences--is, do they quit taking their meds with the intent of committing a crime, and using insanity as a defence. or do they quit taking meds because they hate the mental and physical torture those drugs notoriously cause?
Do we know that? Everyone medicated with anti-psychotics tries to quit them? *Everyone*? I could see perhaps many, or even a very large percentage do... but every single person seems dubious to me. I don't know, you may be correct... I do know, however, that no two people experience exactly the same effect from taking psychotropic medications. Different people, different brain chemistry.
I also know that people taking psychotropic meds may stop taking them for any number of reasons, or no reason at all.
It's an interesting question, and a difficult one, even with four possible answers. It seems to me that a question of "did he or did he not know what he was doing, both when he didn't take the medication and when he committed the crime?" would be very difficult to prosecute in a criminal proceeding. The Prosecutor has to get all twelve jurors to be certain "yes"-es to both questions, but the defense only has to get *one* of them to *doubt* it.
Nit pick all you like.
Had much experience with people who take them? I worked at the Child Study and Treatment Center at Western State Mental Hospital. People HATE those drugs. At least, the ones who have to take them. The people whose lives are made easier by chemical warehousing love them.
The reason why they stop taking their meds is to some degree irrelevant to the consequences. If (when they are lucid) they know that stopping their meds (for whatever reason) will render them dangerous to society and they choose to stop them (for whatever reason), they have some culpability.
Not so. Their meds are a form of torture. Who volunteers to be tortured? Have you ever seen someone with tardive dyskinesia? Can you imagine what it is like to have Parkinsonian tremors for life? NOt mention the chemical lobotomy. It is not a stretch to liken quitting meds to taking actions under the influence of drugs. If a junkie quits taking heroin, he or she is a hero. If a schizophrenic quits taking far more dangerous, destructive, mind-altering drugs he is a criminal?
Why not just find better things to do about the schizophrenia? Because it is too easy, and too profitable, to continue a treatment that isn't a treatment, but a chemical warehousing. No one would think it wrong to quit taking sedatives that didn't cure crime but only made a sane person less likely to commit crime by drugging them into tractability. Why is the same thing OK in the 'care' of a person who is legally incompetent, a person with the status of a child under the law?
Just what "better things" did you have in mind? I'm talking about people who are a danger to themselves and others. Some paranoid schizophrenics are clearly dangers to society. In Dickens' day they were locked up in asylums for the criminally insane. Surely you wouldn't want to go back to that?
It is important to remember that no one knows what causes schizophrenia. A possible genetic component has been identified, and possible structural abnormalities in some. Not e the use of the wrod 'possible.'
They *don't know what it is.* Yet they use immensely dangerous, powerful, and intensely unpleasant drugs to 'treat' it. It is little better than witchcraft and Big Pharma's strangle hold on medical treatment. After all, ANYONE can be made tractable with sufficiently powerful drugs. That isn't treatment, it is a chemical lobotomy. Understandably, the victims of this voodoo 'cure' don't care for it--it is designed to make warehousing cheap, not improve their lives or treat their disease.
It is significantly better than witchcraft, which does nothing. Even if they *don't know what it is* they know that by altering the balance of chemicals in the brain that many schizophrenics can function almost "normally" (whatever that is). I'm not saying it's perfect... but it certainly gets better results than anything we've tried in the past (like witchcraft).
Physical lobotomy works just as well, is cheaper, and is just as irreversible as many of the side effects of anti=psychotics. Yet people recoil in horror. Why is that bad, but doing the same thing chemically is not?
Since the frist of the drugs were used in the US in the 1940s--rauwolfia, from which reserpine was derived--there has been no real researhc into any other answer. Drug 'em and warehouse 'em--frequently on the streets, as was done in California when REagan closed all the state-supported mental hospitals.
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[1 point] 3 years ago by deleted user ReplyNaw, I don't think guilty. But they are OBVIOUSLY someone who needs to be removed from society both for the good of society and themselves.
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[1 point] 3 years ago by deleted user ReplyThat would be, "guilty by reason of mental disease or defect."
But if we locked up everyone who you think should be in a mental sanatorium for life, there wouldn't be enough sanatoriums in the world. ;o)
The U.S. already has only 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's prison population. Just how many more people do you think we can lock up?
That's a completely different argument. We have too much funding for prisons (since they've become "for profit" institutions) and too little funding for mental health in this country. Many of those languishing in prison should probably be in mental health institutions. Quite common. My best friend works with kids who have borderline issues that have been removed from homes. Many of them they are unable to rescue. They have true, unaddressable mental health issues. They go on to commit crimes and end up in prison whereas if they'd received proper mental health support, they might have been able to find a stable life for themselves.
It's not a "completely" different argument when it comes to funding. If they need to be in mental health institutions or they need to be in prisons, we still have to pay for them. :o(
Having said that, I agree with you that we still don't do a good job of caring for the mentally ill... although we are slightly improved over Dickens' day.
It is a "completely" different argument. (lol) Your comment about mental institutions was actually a personal dig at Wing, your argument about size of the US prison population was the "completely different" argument. You didn't tie the subjects together. I did. (lol)
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[0 points] 3 years ago by deleted user ReplyWingnutt, why did you change your picture?