A new review published in Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law finds that involuntary psychiatric hospitalization has numerous harms and one possible benefit.
The many harms included coercion, overmedication, increased risk of suicide and death, decreased satisfaction with care, greater costs of treatment, and longer lengths of stay.
The single possible benefit identified in the current work, led by Amy Corderoy from the University of South Wales in Australia, was increased function and decreased symptoms. However, most research examining symptoms and function found that involuntary admission was not associated with better outcomes than voluntary admission. The authors also note that the better clinical outcomes for involuntary treatment observed in two studies could be a result of coercive practices and severe symptoms decreasing on their own.
Although the current work was titled The benefits and harms of inpatient involuntary psychiatric treatment: a scoping review, the authors could only identify a single dubious benefit. The present review also excluded qualitative studies of involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, which tend to show extensive harms that quantitative studies can miss. This means that even when research around involuntary psychiatric admissions is tailored to exclude the worst harms, and likely overstate the single possible benefit as “benefits“, the harms of this practice far outweigh the “benefit.”
The authors write:
“This scoping review of the benefits and harms of involuntary psychiatric admission has found mixed results depending on the outcome examined and whether respondents are people with a mental illness or their families or carers. Involuntary admission can lead to significant improvement in symptoms of mental illness and function in the community, which can sometimes exceed that seen in voluntary controls. This may be because people admitted involuntarily displayed poorer function and worse symptoms at admission and so benefited to a greater degree than voluntary admissions as a result of regression to the mean. Another explanation is that any negative effects of involuntary admission may be related to experienced coercion … However, this review has found that involuntary admission may in and of itself be associated with a number of harms.”
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The fact that involuntary psychiatric detention causes numerous harms is something not even the most conditioned psychiatrist is likely to deny unless they are either insane or outrageously dishonest, and who else in society would deny that involuntary psychiatric detention causes numerous harms? So who needs enormously expensive studies to prove as much, and even when they do so, why do they imagine they could thereby raise consciousness about it when it’s something that every Tom, Dick and Harry in this insane asylum we are all living in already knows? And what kind of impotence is implied by the fact of making this a news story to put on a website devoted to a radical critique and exposure of the lies and pretentions of the field? Now, this study and this article really is the cry of a mouse, and if it gets loud enough it might hope only to attract a big black booted foot to come and squash it. Perhaps I am that dreaded booted foot! We don’t need mouse squeaks. Take it from a lion.
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It’s good to see someone doing work like this.
Too bad their conclusion is not more definitive.
It should be clear that involuntary commitment is not done to benefit the person committed, but that it is a symptom of societal incompetence in this area.
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It’s a complex subject, I will admit.
As one whose introduction to the psych drugs was by a, dangerously paranoid of a non-existent malpractice suit PCP, who wanted to cover up her husband’s “bad fix” on a broken bone of mine – which I’d call criminal abuse of psychiatry. And since my second opinion doctor was a psychologist who, according to her, and all my family’s medical records (and my later psych research), misdiagnosed me based upon her pastor’s and a pedophile’s wife’s lies. Well, since covering up child abuse is illegal, that was also criminal abuse of psychiatry.
And as one who had one of my force drugging hospital doctors eventually convicted by the FBI for having lots of patients medically unnecessarily shipped long distances to himself, then his “snowing” psychiatric partner massively neurotoxic poisoned people in the hope they would stop breathing, so they could do unneeded tracheotomies on people, for profit – a third form of criminal abuse of psychiatry.
And I was also attacked by another psychologist, decades after my escape, who tried to gaslight me into signing a contract that was a take a percentage of gross thievery contract, combined with an appalling conservative contract, all disingenuously dressed up as an “art manager” contract – and use of those conservatorship contracts is one more form of criminal abuse of psychiatry/psychology as well, IMHO. Of course I didn’t sign the contract. Oh, but I did learn a couple years after that, that psychologist had been hacking into my computer, for years, which is also illegal.
Well, obviously I know the “right” to force drug people is being systemically abused by criminal doctors (and pastors, et al). But I did also have much more mutually respectful interactions with psychiatrists, after I’d researched into the psych industries for a couple decades.
I had a loved one who was more “psychotic” than anyone I’d ever seen, who did eventually need to be held against his will in a psych facility briefly. The psychiatrists I dealt with at that hospital were embarrassed that I’d dealt with the “bad fix” covered up with complex iatrogenesis. But they were kind enough to avoid the anticholinergic drugs, and got my loved one calmed down, and no longer psychotic, on a low dose of lithium, within about a week and a half. And my loved one was weaned off that lithium pretty quickly.
So, in as much as I know there is way too much forced psych drugging for nefarious reasons, I also know it’s not easy to deal with a large psychotic person oneself. So the legality and/or need for forced treatment is a complex subject, but the systemic corruption of the psych industries should be addressed, too.
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But I will say, my loved one’s “psychosis” etiologies – and he is doing well now – had nothing to do with the psychiatric industry’s “invalid” “lifelong, incurable, genetic” DSM “bible” disorders.
Since his issues were related to his nurse practitioner’s inappropriately given bad drug interactions (although I didn’t catch those potentially deadly bad drug interactions initially either, and I did check), sleep deprivation, the death of his 21 year old beloved dog, and likely alcohol encephalitis.
So I still do stand in support of getting rid of the scientifically “invalid” DSM.
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Illiegal curruption detaining humans mostly Christians woman prior to new marriages by contracted abusers to steal property money and just for the sick control of ownership .
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I agree, Someone Else. āItās a complex subjectā.
I keep getting ātriggeredā, just on the title of this article, alone.
It was 8 years ago. I have never swallowed a psychotropic since. I will never trust the healthcare industry, again. Will I ever be able to put the experience behind me?
It is state sponsored violence. I experienced insurance fraud. Thank you Rob Wipond. You did document my experience in your book āYour Consent is Not Requiredā.
I finally figured out what I could say, that might add to the subject.
Know your rights. They cannot hold you against your will, indefinitely, without a judge saying so (in the U.S.A.) I accepted the lawyer offered to me. The lawyer was free. I asked who was paying the lawyer? It was the county. Not optimal, but worth a shot. It worked. I was released, in under 30 minutes, 24 hours before āmy day in courtā. I was hustled right out of there.
What is complex ā¦ is all I saw were senior citizens (Iām old).
Yes, everyone was distressed. All had distressing stories. I saw no genuine āmental illnessā. I saw TBIās, dementia, a benzo addict, elders facing cancer alone, one guy was looking for ā3 hots and a cotā, 25% were asking for assisted living, one woman was looking for assistance with a predator daughter in her home (claiming the daughter was mentally ill), and one woman who had been removed from her home without her teeth.
What is society to do with people who cannot take care of themselves?
That is what is complex.
I donāt believe in mental illness.
This elder story is no different than the injustice being done to our foster kids.
I am not mentally ill. I needed a tooth pulled. I could not make that happen. A salt water gargle and antipsychotics wonāt help.
But what is society to do?
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