A man who killed his brother’s fiancée in a psychotic rage just hours after being released from an overnight stay at a psychiatric hospital for bizarre behavior successfully sued the hospital and the doctor who treated him there for not holding him involuntarily as the law permitted. He had successfully used the insanity defense to gain an acquittal at his murder trial; the judge ruled that the hospital and the doctor’s negligence had substantially contributed to the victim’s death. The man claimed damages because of how horrible the experience of being remanded to jail after his apprehension on the murder charge was. The Australian
Not knowing the details of the case, I don’t know how to assess the finding that the treaters were negligent in not reasonably forseeing or preventing the possibility of harm. But there should be no general principle inferred from this case that treaters are responsible for the harm committed by the psychiatric patients under there care. Negligence is a relatively narrowly defined circumstance the burden of proof for which is on the plaintiff rather than just assumed whenever a harm occurs. Psychiatric violence is usually not forseeable in the short run even if you know (as was probably not the case in this instance, because the article implies that the patient apparently was suffering from a transient acute psychotic episode rather than an exacerbation of a chronic condition) that the patient has a history of or a potential for violence in the abstract… unless you go in for preventive detention (although I realize some would argue that that is exactly what involuntary psychiatric hospitalization is…). I hope this case will not perpetuate the stereotype of the dangerous psychotic patient which is an important contributor to the villification and stigmatization of the psychiatrically ill in our society. Violence among psychiatrically ill individuals is much mreo foten of a more prosaic variety, arising from substance abuse or antisocial traits. The ostracism and scrutiny of the mentally ill as a whole destabilize them further and are an important source of their suffering.
Related? Here’s a disturbing story about the lengths to which the forced drug treatment of psychiatric patients can be taken, predicated on the fact that
China has 70 million bachelors unable to find wives. Men outnumber women as a result of a one-child policy which led to many fetuses of girls, traditionally discriminated against, being aborted. Yahoo!
