Sam1911
Moderator Emeritus
I am a historian by trade, I've read quite a bit about the history of science and medicine and I can tell you with utmost certainty that your opinion here is COMPLETELY wrong. Utterly wrong.In isolated incidents Sam, doctors have done terrible things indeed, but only in isolated incidents. It is nothing like the mental health system of the 1940s and you know it.
Explorations (and terrible abuses) into mental health care go back centuries, just like the many truly terrible and destructive and lethal things that were commonly performed, prescribed, and administered by other types of medical practitioner -- far MORE commonly than the abuses within the field of mental health. Mental health care was frequently wrong-headed and abusive and sometimes deadly, but so was just about every other field of health care. Treatments were, more often than not, worse than the disease, illness, or injury.
Certainly true, but your cardiologist has very little concern that the lethal event you're about to experience may cause the traumatic deaths of many other people -- different stakes, you understand.No general practitioner is going to have you locked up and prevent you from ever legally owning a firearm again. Not in this day and age.
However, medical professionals absolutely do have the authority to "ruin" your life by ending your career if you happen to be in various fields where your condition might put others' lives at risk.
I've expressed my own opinion about the appropriate response to the school shooting problem elsewhere, but suffice to say here that I'm not convinced that any major social change or reassignment of funds specifically to address the problem makes any logical, statistical or fiscal sense at all. So, from that perspective you may consider that I'm not a fan of systemic changes to the mental health system either.If you want to strengthen that system, the same system that systematically committed terrible atrocities, and the same system you are seeking to revive, then by all means knock yourself out. As I said before you're making your own noose.
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