Who Makes the Decisions?
Posted on 13/07/2010 | 1 Comments
Recently there was a report of an extraordinary example of political interference in mental health treatment. A political interference based not on knowledge but as far as I can tell, based on stigma or perhaps with a bit of so called “law and order” pandering to the uninformed.
The story unfolds in this way. A person who is in secure treatment for a murder committed when he was psychotic applied to have supervised outdoor walks. The mental health treatment team supported that application and it was permitted by the Criminal Code Review Board who are charged with the responsibility for such decisions. Without these walks (remember that they would be supervised – that is, the person who as far as I know has improved with treatment would be accompanied by two trained mental health staff during short outings) the person would have to languish indoors all summer.
Upon hearing about this decision, the Minister of Justice in Manitoba – Andrew Swan, overturned the board’s decision, ordering that no supervised walks could be allowed! Why? According to Swan it was “contrary to the interests of public safety”.
What hogwash. Since when did Minister Swan get his credentials in mental health? And what possessed him to overturn a duly constituted and credible evaluative process? Could it be stigma against the mentally ill? Could it be the lowest form of political pandering to ignorance and fear? What kind of a message does this send to people living with mental illness? What message does this send to their families? What message does this send to society in general?
Shame on Minister Swan. This is something we could have expected in medieval times, not in 2010 in Canada.
--Stan
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This is a great set of comments and rings very true.
I totally agree that scientists (just like everyone else) have their biases and foibles. After all, scientists are human beings too! But science is different than scientists.
The scientific method is the most objective frame that we have by which to evaluate and predict. Science is not about finding truth. It is only about being less wrong most of the time. The scientific method (experimental design and mathematics) gives us the ability to test what we believe. The scientific method is not used to prove something is correct, on the contrary, the scientific method is designed to prove that something is not correct! It is designed to test what is called the “null hypothesis”. It takes ideas that come out of left field (or wherever else they come from) and puts those ideas to an independent test.
t does not drive our beliefs. It does however challenge our beliefs. In that way it is self-correcting. Of course scientific inquiry and understanding lives within a wider social context. That is one of the great features of science.
But gravity is gravity, social context notwithstanding. And thus it is nasty, brutish and long. As Brecht said, (something like this) - the purpose of science is to save us from everlasting error.
By Christina Carew on May 11th
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Kelly S said...
I agree with this post. However, it’s not just politicians who perpetuate the stigma by denying patients the right to engage in self-care. In my opinion, some mental health practitioners perpetuate the stigma by treating their patients inhumanely. For example, I was denied fresh air and exercise for a period of about a year (even prisoners get an hour). In the view of the mental health team that was administering my treatment, walks were considered a reward for complying with their rules. And all I had was OCD. Imagine if I had decapitated someone!
In my view, walks should be part of, and not seperate, from the treatment
As a social work student at Dalhousie, and a former mental health “client”, I would recommend that politicians and mental health practitioners critically reflect on how aspects of mental health treatment programs are oppressive and reinforce stigma. It would be nice to see workshops and pamphlets (possibly facilitated by health professionals who have been “treated” in the system) that would raise awareness of how dominant ideas about people with mental illnesses have influenced treatment methods.
Comment made on August 05th, 2010
What do you think?