Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ttidcc.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!genrad!teddy!panda!talcott!harvard!seismo!cmcl2!philabs!ttidca!ttidcc!hollombe From: hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP (Jerry Hollombe) Newsgroups: net.suicide Subject: re:civil liberties, law, etc Message-ID: <190@ttidcc.UUCP> Date: Mon, 21-Jan-85 14:50:53 EST Article-I.D.: ttidcc.190 Posted: Mon Jan 21 14:50:53 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 27-Jan-85 05:04:38 EST Organization: TTI, Santa Monica, CA. Lines: 98 >From: mjc@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA (Monica Cellio) >Subject: civil liberties, law, etc >Message-ID: <243@cmu-cs-cad.ARPA> >Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI First, I'd like to remind people that what I said in my previous posting applied ONLY to the state of California. I'm not well versed in the laws of other states. The same goes for what I say here. >From: hollombe@ttidcc.UUCP ? (Jerry Hollombe) >>Here, IF you can demonstrate a person is a clear and present danger to >>themselves (or others) you can PROBABLY get them put on a 72 hour hold. > >I was talking about people who had actually attempted suicide, rather than >people who are a risk but haven't done anything. Here people who have actually attempted suicide are generally taken to medical hospitals to recover from the attempt. (I assume the same is done in most places.) I have known cases where we couldn't get someone put on 72 hour hold even after the paramedics had rescued them in the midst of an attempt. There simply wasn't any space available in the local mental hospitals (thank you, former Governer, now President, Reagan )-: ). The same funding shortages mean that Psychic Evaluation Teams (PET squads) are only available 9 to 5, Monday through Friday (really, I'm NOT joking). Getting into a mental hospital on a weekend night can be well nigh impossible even for people who WANT to be admitted. >>As for calling the ACLU, most wards have pay-phones accessible to the >>patients. > >of his hands. His phone privileges were subsequently taken away. Yes, he >was breaking a rule by calling someone not on the 'approved' list. (Phone >privileges were granted such that a patient was allowed to call two or three >people at best (family had to be the first one), and he had to specify who he >was calling when he started the call. The phone was also behind a locked >door, so random access was impossible.) On the other hand, his civil rights Phones at Camarillo State Mental Hospital (for example) just hang on the wall in an open ward -- no locks, no bugs. As I mentioned before, the SPC used to get calls from inpatients even after we had complained to the staff there. >her? [As an aside, every one of the 'rights' was tested and failed.] This >person was under 18, by the way, but she, not her parents, had signed the >admissions forms. > >Anyone know how the laws break down for people under 18? Here a person under 18 doesn't really have much in the way of rights. Her signature on the admissions forms would have been worthless. If she was in a hospital, it would be with the permission of her parents or legal guardian and very much up to them whether she could leave or not (assuming the hospital was willing to keep her). The best she could hope for would be to convince a sympathetic doctor (yes, they do exist) to discharge her. A friend of mine did exactly that after being sent to an inpatient drug rehab program as an alternative to jail on a drug bust. >Anyway, it is this sort of stuff that makes me despise the current system of >punishment. Sadly, there are still "snake pits" out there even in California, and we're better than most. Over-medication is probably the worst offense in most of these places. You don't have to grab phones away from people who are too stoned to find the handset. You need less people to supervise them in general, too, and budget constraints are always tight. > I'm by no means an expert (I don't even work in the field) but >isn't there *some* other way to solve the problem aside from locking people >up? I have a Master's degree in clinical psychology and I don't claim to be an expert either. On the other hand, "to solve the problem" is really much too vague a statement to be meaningfully answered. Some people really do need to be locked up for their own good and that of society. Some really do benefit from a few weeks rest and tranquilizers. Most have very little chance of improvement if they are kept in an institution longer than a few weeks. Thereafter, their chances of improvement vary inversely with their length of stay. I can't offer any obvious, easy answers. I can point out that the chief controlling factor in terms of quality care is economic. Most of the snake pit conditions one encounters can be traced back to inadequate budgets rather than to deliberate malice or desire to maltreat people. The money simply isn't there to hire the quality help needed to do the job right. (Example: I work with computers because I couldn't make a living with a Master's in psychology. I'm not talking about a GOOD living. I could not get a job that paid enough to SUBSIST on.) -- ============================================================================== ... sitting in a pile of junk on the runway, wondering what happened ... The Polymath (Jerry Hollombe) Citicorp TTI If thy CRT offend thee, pluck 3100 Ocean Park Blvd. it out and cast it from thee. Santa Monica, California 90405 (213) 450-9111, ext. 2483 {vortex,philabs}!ttidca!ttidcc!hollombe