It’s so easy to proclaim, “There is a mental health crisis in America, leading students to shoot up public schools. Something has got to be done about it.”
It’s a lot harder to defend the idea that government should be involved in the mental health of its citizens.
Because to get government responsible for the mental health of its citizens, the government must first decide what “mental health” is according to a legally enforceable and one-size-fits-all standard.
See how well this worked out in a range of countries including Soviet Russia, Maoist China, modern Communist China, Cuba, India, Israel and even California:
Soviet Union:
There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called “psychopathological mechanisms” of dissent.
During the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, psychiatry was used to disable and remove from society political opponents (“dissidents”) who openly expressed beliefs that contradicted the official dogma. The term “philosophical intoxication”, for instance, was widely applied to the mental disorders diagnosed when people disagreed with the country’s Communist leaders and, by referring to the writings of the Founding Fathers of Marxism–Leninism—Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin—made them the target of criticism.
“Psychopathological mechanisms” of dissent. It all starts with government paying for everyone’s “mental health care” as a moral and political right. It ends with this. Every time it’s tried. America will be no different.
Canada:
The Duplessis Orphans were several thousand orphaned children that were falsely certified as mentally ill by the government of the province of Quebec, Canada, and confined to psychiatric institutions.
People have almost unlimited faith in government. Yet left to its own devices, government will always and only do what serves the interests of the government. It’s particularly true when a government no longer answers to the people, as America’s original system of government once did. Once you get to the point where a majority consider it feasible and proper for a government to monitor and define the mental health of its citizens, it’s already past the state of being a truly free country, at least psychologically.
China:
Chinese documents from the Maoist Communist era tell of a massive abuse of psychiatry for political purposes during the leadership of Mao Zedong, during which millions of people had been declared mentally sick. In the 1980s, according to the official documents, there was political connotation to fifteen percent of all forensic psychiatric cases. In the early 1990s, the numbers had dropped to five percent, but with beginning of the campaign against Falun Gong, the percentage had again increased quite rapidly.
Chinese official psychiatric literature testifies distinctly that the Communist Party’s notion of ‘political dangerousness’ was long since institutionally engrafted in the diagnostic armory of China’s psychiatry and included in the main concept of psychiatric dangerousness.
Imagine a mandate in the United States whereby the government, in the interest of protecting government school safety, reducing Medicare/Medicaid costs, or whatever else, issued guidelines about “political dangerousness”. It wouldn’t be long before dissenters appreciated the obnoxious disingenuousness and double standards of entities like Facebook and Twitter.
Cuba:
In August 1981, the Marxist historian Ariel Hidalgo was apprehended and accused of ‘incitement against the social order, international solidarity and the Socialist State’ and sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. In September 1981, he was transported from State Security Headquarters to the Carbó-Serviá (forensic) ward of Havana Psychiatric Hospital where he stayed for several weeks
India:
It was reported in June, 2012, that the Indian Government has approached NIMHANS, a well-known mental health establishment in South India, to assist in suppressing anti-nuclear protests regards to building of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant. The government was in talks with NIMHANS representatives to chalk up a plan to dispatch psychiatrists to Kudankulam, for counseling protesters opposed to the building of the plant. To fulfill this, NIMHANS developed a team of 6 members, all of them, from the Department of Social Psychiatry. The psychiatrists were sent to get a “peek into the protesters’ minds” and help them learn the importance of the plant according to one news source.
Psychological therapy and counseling is not about gentle persuasion or “helping” someone understand the “importance” of a particular government policy. Yet when you mix psychology and government, that’s precisely what mental health care becomes.
Therapists do, with patient/client consent, “peek into” the minds and psyches of mentally conflicted people. But when these therapists are hired by the government, or paid by the government, to do so, it’s no longer about the best interest of the patient/client. And if you actually believe otherwise, your delusional frame-of-mind may be well beyond the help of even the greatest psychiatrist or therapist out there.
California:
“5150 (involuntary psychiatric hold)” – There are many instances of usage of California law section 5150, which allows for involuntary psychiatric hold based on the opinion of a law enforcement official, psychological professional (or many other individuals who hold no qualification for making psychological assessment), which have been challenged as being unrelated to safety, and misused as an extension of political power.
California, with one-party, hard leftist rule as far as the eye can see, is already on the verge of becoming America’s first Communist-collectivist state. With rules like this in place, they’re already there.
Israel:
On February 3rd 2016 The Head Israeli Government פסיכיאטר מחוזי Ouzi Shay עוזי שי falsely claimed that Raphael Rubin רפאל רובין was examined in an Emergency Room in an Israeli Hospital by a Psychiatrist. There were in addition severe false accusations and lies made to discredit Raphael Rubin as a sane person and a good father. The maneuver was orchestrated by the State of Israel to discredit Raphael Rubin and other divorced fathers אבות גרושים and ultimately failed.
In fact this followed a protest by Raphael Rubin against the treatment of his Daughters in an Institution and The State of Israel tried to send off this protester to forced hospitalization by providing a false report of a psychiatric evaluation that never took place. The hospitalization was rejected by a Higher Israeli Psychiatrists Commission and the statements themselves were proven to be lies by a major Israeli Psychiatrist Doctor Margalit Ben Or ד”ר מרגלית בן אור who worked with The Head Israeli Government פסיכיאטר מחוזי Ouzi Shay עוזי שי in 1996/1997.
In Israel, the United States, Communist China, Cuba or anywhere else, mental health professionals – even good ones – are fallible human beings.
Invest them with the power to determine the status of a citizen’s mental health according to their compliance with – or lack of compliance with – the edicts, values and priorities of government authorities, and you have the very essence of a totalitarian state.
Once the government has the final and only say in determining what’s sound for the mind to think, any last vestiges of freedom and liberty are completely gone.
So think about that before you stupidly and mindlessly assert, “There’s a mental health problem in America. And I demand our government do something about it.”
Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1