Commitment in the News - Oct 2024 Round-up

Cheeseburger w/Antipsychotic, Journalists Out of Touch with Facts, and TD Bank’s Dirty Fentanyl

In case you were wondering if you missed any interesting, important, or infuriating news stories about involuntary commitment recently, here I link to and discuss some of the reports good, bad, and aghast-ly that provoked reactions in me this past month or so…

As has been common for a few years now, news media reports are heavily focused on involuntary commitment as a solution to issues in urban streets—especially drug use.

Proposition 36 in California would create a new type of "treatment-mandated felony," and promises "a new era of mass treatment" for people, for example, who are convicted a third time for drug possession (convictions which of course happen disproportionately to people who don’t have the benefit of using drugs in the comfort of their own homes). There’s so much wrong-headed about this proposal—much of which is touched on at points in this CalMatters article. For one, given the overloads in California’s mental health system, the bill would more likely usher in a new era of mass imprisonment--period. But apart from that… Is anyone else as unnerved as I am that our society is at the point where threatening to usher in “a new era of mass treatment” is considered by many to be a popular political selling point?

That’s partly why I was glad that the New York Times covered and covered again, and then made videos and podcasts covering the corruption at Acadia, one of America’s largest psychiatric hospital chains. The Times reported on how hospital staff in many states routinely take advantage of mental health laws to forcibly tranquilize and detain virtually anyone for profit.

However, the Times journalists framed the story as if their investigation “discovered” all this—instead of more helpfully and accurately emphasizing to readers that Acadia’s systemic corruption has been publicized for many, many years around the country, and yet has persisted. It’s important that people understand how truly dangerous mental health laws are, and how dangerously unregulated the industry of involuntary commitment is. (Acadia recently settled with the Department of Justice—partially for now, anyway—for a $19.5 million penalty.)

But the New York Times perpetually sidesteps around systemic criticism, and instead much more often pumps psychiatry and involuntary commitment as a panacea. This is exemplified in the Times article on “street psychiatry” in Los Angeles—where psychiatrists patrol the streets, enticing poor, hungry homeless people with offerings of free cheeseburgers in exchange for conversations about accepting a hit of an antipsychotic injection that will last a month.

Granted, the Times story gives enough details for knowledgeable critics to be horrified at the depths of manipulation, coercion, and (is it not?) blatant malpractice these psychiatrists are engaged in as they inject powerful tranquilizing drugs while having absolutely zero verified knowledge about patients’ histories, medical records, or current health status or other drug use. But unfortunately, ordinary Times readers have repeatedly been told that almost any level of coercion is justified because antipsychotics “save lives”—and this article gives that belief plenty more support. One example: A psychiatrist tells a meth-addicted patient, “You know, this medication will protect your brain from any of the damaging stuff that crystal can do.” Stating to a patient that antipsychotics physically protect the brain from any and all possible damages that could be caused by using crystal meth—this is the psychiatric equivalent of a medical doctor telling a patient that ginseng is 100% proven to prevent damages from skydiving without a parachute. And the Times lets it go uncorrected, unchallenged.

Consequently, in my opinion, the most important and revealing story this month on street issues and drug use was this report about Canadian-based TD Bank. The international financial titan got fined $3 billion by US regulators—TD admitted to laundering at least $670 million over six years for organized dealers of illegal fentanyl. So, if you’re truly trying to grapple with the problems of rampant street drugs, rising rates of psychotic reactions from too-powerful drugs, and skyrocketing overdoses from fentanyl-laced drugs—stop criticizing homeless people and shortages of forced treatment and take a sharper look at the financial and political establishment that’s pushing and profiting from all of this.

But I didn’t see any news media making the logical linkages to urban streets…

Instead, many news media were busy uncritically promoting a new schizophrenia drug coming soon to street corners near you—although StatNews ran an op-ed by Sally Littlefield, a self-identified former psychiatric patient, questioning all those outsized promotional claims.

But what makes her article strong is Littlefield’s explanations as to why, at heart, she simply doesn’t trust the mental health system. She writes that “involuntary treatment saved me from suicide” but, at the same time, “the mental health care system also abused and traumatized me.” She criticizes how “the people in that system rarely seem interested in hearing about negative experiences,” and concludes, “To be a psychiatric patient is to be unheard, to be told to be quiet and be grateful."

Similar views of the commitment system are highlighted in a new lawsuit launched by a parent on behalf of his incarcerated daughter against an Acadia facility in Indiana. In a Fox News report, the father describes her treatment at the facility as intolerable and abusive—unsanitary conditions, no real evaluation done, no therapy provided, repeatedly violently harassed by a male patient, threatened with heavy tranquilization for complaining etc. Which is basically the same as what Littlefield and countless other survivors and independent researchers have described as common practice in involuntary psychiatric care—whether fraudulent or “legitimate.”

So, it was refreshing to see a journalist and judge who seemingly did “get” some of the kinds of perspectives survivors often share, and that I’ve frequently felt myself when reading through patients’ medical records.

The Hartford Courant reported on a judge overseeing a Connecticut Supreme Court case involving a woman "arrested, involuntarily committed to a maximum security mental institution for nine months and forcibly medicated with antipsychotics after she refused to identify herself to a hotel reservation clerk."

So aghast was Justice Stephen Ecker at the facts of this case, he was quoted saying, “From the very moment the police arrived on that scene to today as we sit here, there is a cascading series of dystopian decisions that cannot undergird any sense of justice.” Ecker concluded that the committed woman “had demonstrated at least as much emotional stability through her ordeal as those who forced medication on her,” and commented about the treatment providers, "You read those psychiatric reports and you sort of wonder: Who is in closer touch with reality?”

Indeed…

Nevertheless, in the run-up to the recent provincial elections in British Columbia, Canada, both of the leading left-ish and right-ish political parties—much like in many US states—were promoting expansions to forced psychiatric treatment, especially for drug users who are “out of touch with reality.” (Amid that, there was a rarity worth spotting: A CBC report on a public rally in BC to protest such expansions.)

At the same time, the relatively new Canadian federal Conservative leader weighed in by also promoting expansions to forced treatment for these many people “who are incapable of making decisions”—which is one of the many statements justifying involuntary commitment that is so ubiquitous in news stories… and so problematic… and so, well, out of touch with reality, really.

What does the statement even mean? It’s rarely ever defined or discussed, but simply quoted and/or cited as if it’s a sensible statement. Yet is there anyone on Earth “incapable” of “making decisions”? The notion is ridiculous—two year olds are capable of making decisions, and some strong ones at that. What’s really meant here is something more like “we should commit people who make decisions which some other people think are bad decisions”—but saying it that way would leave the idea open to more reasonable discussion and debate.

A recent op-ed in Canada’s national Globe & Mail exemplifies, still more, how and why news reporting on involuntary commitment is so consistently so abysmally bad, even in major “reputable” news media.

Any of us who follow the news have probably seen hundreds of articles exactly like this one by Globe & Mail columnist Marcus Gee about the downtown bus ride that made him uncomfortable—it’s as if there’s a fill-in-the-blanks template out there for making bigoted, ill-informed, pro-force op-eds.

These articles always start with a few one-liners, each denoting an “obviously” crazy person in the street (or city bus) who self-evidently “needs” involuntary commitment (Gee: “A barefoot man in dirty clothes was walking up and down the aisle” and “a skinny guy with tangled hair who was dragging a beat-up rolling suitcase and muttering to himself in Spanish”). Then that’s followed by a lament about how those old asylums were, okay, maybe, sorta horrific—but they did much good, too. And finally, the articles move on to utterly uninformed promotion of today’s much more “compassionate” lock-ups and “effective” treatments.

Journalist Jeremy Appel wrote a merciful takedown of the article—really, you can skip Gee’s and just read Appel’s. But I want to highlight something else that’s terribly common in articles like Gee’s—and is the key lynchpin on which they almost always hang.

Without citing any data, Gee states that far too few people in Canada get involuntarily committed anymore, and this is because "in many jurisdictions, people can be detained...only if they pose a danger to themselves or others." This, he says, is the root of all the problems that “we” see on streets and buses (like people with mussed hair and old suitcases speaking Spanish!).

First, in fact, all of the data available shows that rates of commitment have been climbing in most of Canada for decades, and are much higher than all other comparable Western countries—save the most carceral nation on Earth, the U.S. I reported on this myself for the Globe & Mail just last year. (And soon, I’ll be revealing here the most comprehensive Canadian data yet gathered.)

Second, out of the thirteen provinces and territories in Canada, there are not “many” jurisdictions that use only “danger to self or others” criteria as Gee claims, but in fact just a single one—Quebec. All other jurisdictions—including Ontario where Gee’s bus ride took place—have long had vastly expanded criteria stating that anyone with a mental disorder can be committed who could be at risk of any kind of “mental or physical deterioration.”

This highlights how crucial it is for debates about involuntary commitment to be informed by accurate data and knowledge of mental health laws. Once we understand that the laws have already broadened a lot and that incarcerations and forced treatment have already increased a lot, a very different perspective from Gee’s inevitably emerges: WHY ISN’T FORCED PSYCHIATRY SOLVING ANYTHING?

Have you seen a news story about involuntary commitment? Send links (or other tips about legal cases, personal stories, political developments, etc.) to news@robwipond.com