More about Mental Health

The typical response to comments such as my previous is that the mentally ill suffer a lot and we must do something to help them. Well, sure. But how does locking them up help? Either mental illness is a disease or it isn’t. If it isn’t a disease then unwelcome behaviour* should be dealt with through the courts not physicians and our current system is abhorrent. But if it is a disease then involuntary commitment is twice as bad because having a disease is not a reason for someone to be deprived of liberty. We don’t lock you up because you have polio.

And what’s more diagnosis of mental illness is imprecise at best. Co-morbidity is the rule and not the exception. For any given patient diagnosed with schizophrenia (the classic psychiatric condition and the one for which patients are most often committed involuntarily), one-third of psychiatrists would come to a different diagnosis. So not only is the basis for incarceration improper, but the evidence for that (unsound) basis is unreliable.

The solution is a very simple one – that all treatment should be voluntary. This is the principle that underlies all medicine, and there is no reason that mental health should be an exception.

* Some mentally ill people can be violent, for example. But we already have laws against assault, etc.

In search of earth, flying into the sky!

If you are even slightly like me, you adore Ulysses 31. Never heard of it, you say? Get thee behind me, Satan! Ulysses 31 was a fantastic cartoon made in the early 1980s by DIC Audiovisuel/Tokyo Movie Shinsha (who also did the equally brilliant Cities of Gold series – more on that later!). It’s a really weird but brilliant setting of Homer’s Odyssey in a futuristic sci-fi setting. Here, watch the first episode!

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

Hooray!

Liverpool 1 Chelsea 1

Well that was certainly a kick in the knickers. John Arne is one of my favourite players. Damn damn damn damn damn. I’d grown accustomed to the face of disappointed Chelsea fans.

Still, even if we do go on to lose the tie, Liverpool will once again have dramatically overachieved in Europe as compared to the league. The media always throw up their hands as if this is some kind of deep mystery – it happens too often to be a fluke, but what’s the reason? The only explanation proferred so far is that this has something to do with Rafa Benitez’s cunning tactical mastery, but the same thing happened under Gerard Houllier.

There is in fact no mystery to this. The simple fact is that Liverpool are (both under Houllier and Benitez) better in defence than attack.

Goals are to a large extent random events. A team may score 4 in one game and just one in the next, even with the same attack against the same defence. So if your attack isn’t great you’ll draw a lot of games (the ones where you get a little unlucky). And the way to do well in the league is to win consistently – 3 points for a win. But in Europe the game effectively lasts 180 minutes, which means that a team with a great defence but a not-so-great attack has twice along to achieve a separation between goals scored and goals conceded.

I don’t think I am expressing a controversial opinion when I say Liverpool need more quality going forwards.

Slicing up eyeballs (Ah ha ha ho!)

“No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will to no man sell, to no man delay, to no man deny, either Justice or Right.”

This is not just the 800-year-old fundament of our constitution, but it is the principle of every free society. It is the basis of the rule of law, and individual liberty.

Imagine a country where you could be imprisoned against your will, indefinitely and without recourse, without even an accusation of having broken any law. And that this decision to imprison you is taken not by a judge and jury, but is instead an administrative decision by a government functionary. And that while imprisoned you will be forced to undergo medical procedures against your will, including – but not limited to – taking anti-psychotic drugs and undergoing ECT.

The image that springs to most people’s minds is some totalitarian state – Stalinist Russia, perhaps. And indeed, this is exactly what was done to many dissidents in the USSR. But actually, the exact same thing happens in modern Britain – and indeed, the USA, France, Germany etc. And the victims are people labelled (correctly or not) as “mentally ill”.

Some mentally ill people are violent and commit crimes. They indeed should be incarcerated for whatever crimes they may have committed. But these are not the ones whose behaviour I wish to discuss. Rather, those individuals who have broken no law, but some doctor judges to be a risk of “harm to themselves or others” – the standard for “involuntary admission.” I.e. locking someone up against their will.

The standard is wholly arbitrary and unjust, and applied to no other section of the community. Take, for instance, a man whose wife leaves him for another lover. The man is known to be very angry about the situation, and the local police think he might well intend to kill his wife and her new beau. Can the police lock him up as a “risk”? No. They need (1) evidence that (2) he has actually committed some crime. Without that the man is free to proceed on his merry way.

Now suppose that the man actually acts on his intentions, and gets into a fight with his rival. Well, practically speaking he’ll probably only get a caution or at most community service, but if he is sent to prison it will only be by decision of a magistrate or jury, and then only for a fixed period of time. Whether or not the man continues to harbour ill-will towards his wife and her lover is quite irrelevant to how long he will spend incarcerated.

Now suppose instead that the man turns his rage inwards, and becomes depressed. The local GP thinks he might well intend to commit suicide. Well that’s all we need! Lock him up! And keep him locked up until he changes his mind! Forever, if need be! And unlike a regular prisoner, he’s got no rights to refuse medical treatment now!

The whole thing is absolutely monstrous. And that’s without even getting into the extent to which mental illness is really a disease, which I will deal with another time.

If someone says that they are Jesus, shouldn’t the answer be: “Congratulations!”

Getting Started

Hi, and welcome to Lipstick on a Pig. Why the title? Well, I’m the pig, and this blog is the lipstick. So let’s get going.

This blog is going to be about my interests, which frankly are all over the place – Conservative politics, Liverpool football club, civil liberties, mental health issues, San Francisco Giants baseball, economics and children’s cartoons. I’m aware of the idiosyncracy, but I don’t expect a lot of readers – in fact, I don’t expect any readers at all. If you do find some of these things interesting and want to come along for the ride, that’s fantastic – but please remember that this is my blog and I’m writing for my own pleasure.