ex-felons are screwed, what about ex-mental patients?

[JohnBT]

You know, I was looking at the back of the VA form and if you check the involuntary commitment box they instruct you to the back of the form. There's a space for entering the date of the commitment, the committing authority, the date of release and the releasing authority. Now, why would there be a place for this info if they weren't going to consider it?

I think you should make a call and ask about it. (In VA the State Police handle calls related to gun purchases.)

Oops, gotta run. Later...

John

 

[io333]

There's really no point in my making the call, as it's just a hypothetical question for me. It's just that over the years I have met people that attempted suicide, and I've also been studying the effects of the different classes of anti-depressant medications lately. It turns out that for people that experience Major Depressive Episodes (a leading cause of suicide attempts), the anti-depressants have been MIRACLES, the vast majority of the time leading to a complete cure.

So since people *can* be completely cured (unlike say most violent sex offenders), I was wondering if there was a way to have such people's rights totally restored. I guess not.

 

[JohnBT]

I suppose a Major Depressive Disorder, Single Episode (296.2x) might be considered 'cured' at some point, but how does anyone know for sure that it isn't just the first episode of a Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent (296.3x)? The Recurrent version requires two or more episodes separated by at least 2 months.

FWIW, I've met too many people that the new drugs barely helped, much less 'cured.' Then again, to be fair, we usually only see the people that haven't improved much after lengthy treatment that in many cases has spanned years. Maybe they were misdiagnosed and it wasn't really a Major Depression. There's a lot of art involved in the science of mental health treatments.

John