this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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This came up in my health care forum.

Right now, you can legally detain someone medically when they are a danger to themselves or others for up to 72hrs. The details vary by state, but this is how we lock down individuals trying to suicide or someone mentally off the rails making threats of violence.

This variation on that law would also make opposition to Trump qualify.

Civil commitment can follow as with individuals who have profound mental illness and are not safe to be out in the world.

This is the loudest scream that democracy is dead short of hauling people out into the street and shooting them.

It’s important to note the police are currently the people who bring individuals in for the 72hr mental health holds.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago

Americans are fucked. Political disagreement to be classified as a mental disorder? Y'all skipped the Hungary and Russia steps, and went straight to NK.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Psychiatric hospitals are also allowed to lie to you. You can go in voluntarily, and be upgraded to “involuntary” with no recourse.

Mental health techs will lie - cause problems? Guess what, your notes now say that you are “paranoid” and “hear voices.” You’re “paranoid” because a tech beat the shit out of you two hours ago - you don’t hear voices, but you are “crazy” so obviously lying.

Check what rights institutionalized people have in your state. I can tell you where I live, there are none.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

And keep in mind that this is the state of things prior to our current regime that runs on cruelty.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

LOL, the stuff of nightmares.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Quite literally in my case.

PTSD from “psychiatric care” is pretty difficult to deal with (and understudied. fascinating how PTSD only garners you empathy and understanding if you’re a combat rep, despite the fact that most with PTSD do have it from sexual abuse and possibly inpatient experiences - suicide rates skyrocket after involuntary commitment, but why do any form of investigation into something that might hurt profits?)

If you’re afraid of wasps, you aren’t expected to go ask a wasp how to deal with it. If, however, you experience severe abuse at the hands of mental health professionals and you live in an area where mental health care = the police, getting any form of help is pretty difficult.

Especially when they consider your gender identity and sexuality as manifestations of mental illness/further evidence that they don’t need to look into the tech beating the shit out of you.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You’re speaking directly to me. I am a veteran with PTSD. It was from sexual assault and the accompanying involuntary mental health lock up after I went to the doctor to seek help with my sleep.

I was told I could not claim the sexual assault because I would have been kicked out for sleeping with someone that was married and for being gay (this was before they repealed don’t ask don’t tell)….. I would have been court martial and thrown out they said.

Lucky for me I’m an infantry marine with a combat tour so my PTSD gets assumed to be combat and I don’t have to explain much to anyone. But fuck, how am I supposed to go and talk this out with doctors that I don’t trust? I don’t trust the system at all. I was let down by low command (squad), middle command(battalion command), and high command (regimental command). I was then failed by the nurse (corpsman), PCP (battalion doctor), psych (some fuckface colonel), his nurse (another corpsman), and the facilities personnel (nurses, doctors, psychiatrists).

And to compound on all this, I was involuntarily locked up when I was 14(??) because my parents let me get so fucked up that I blacked out and they called cops saying they didn’t know what was wrong with me……. What was wrong was that I was 14 and handed booze and pills…… the fuck did they expect?!? Obviously both times I ended up getting released but that doesn’t remove the inhumanity of it all. The treatment as if you are “other” to them. Like a dog or some shit.

So I’ve had trauma from psych wards from adolescence and also my time in the marines.

Sorry for the rant. Just triggered so much inside me with your comment.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (20 children)

I have met and hung out with a staggering variety of monsters. so much so I might be doxxing myself if I really described the breadth. If you can think of a kind of monster that exists, I have probably met them. I might even have known one well.

I have never met anyone who can reach quite the degree of sadist or control freak as a psychiatrist. Psychopaths aren't as willing to lie spontaneously and throw people away. future cult leaders aren't as quick on the self justification trigger. I genuinely believe sydney gottlieb was one of the less malignant assholes that profession has ever produced.

which is a shame, because the pharmacology of the mind is something I'm deeply interested in. there's cool fucking science there, and we will never see it done.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The power dynamic is the scary part. PTSD isn’t just trauma - it’s trauma with powerlessness and an invalidated narrative.

Saying “hey I need help, I’m struggling with not wanting to leave the house or be alive” - and then losing your rights. Being forced into a room which isn’t clean. The threat that they can medicate you if you annoy them to much (asking to speak to an advocate, asking to file a grievance).

It’s strange that suicidal ideation is considered enough to make you “crazy.” I don’t understand why the response to someone cogently explaining the reasons they want to die (and most of those reasons being fairly rational responses) = “this person is crazy and should be a ward of the state for the next couple days.”

They also get to present this as the only option - “oh, you want 988 to let people just die over the phone?” Well, the research indicates that suicide rates spike not just immediately after institutionalization - but the effects continues for YEARS LATER.

The charge nurse joked that even with the 72-hour hold, weekends didn’t count and they would be happy to keep me for five days if I didn’t shut up.

They also didn’t properly discharge me/provide paperwork. I lost my job because of this. I was already reluctant to seek out help (my mother was a serious Munchausen by proxy - she sent me to institutions as a child telling them I was violent/on drugs/etc - I was a straight edge teen that didn’t even look at porn because I was scared of what she would do.)

Instead of help, I got another set of memories to crush me at 4 in the morning. I got mistreated for being trans, which further contributes to the atmosphere of fear I live in. I lost my job, which is already a struggle because I need to save up to get out of here.

I’m sick of people suggesting therapy as the first response to anyone describing mental health struggles. I’ve met so few capable of anything more than providing the CBT worksheets that seem to be all they’re trained to do nowadays.

Psychiatry and psychology as fields ultimately seem more about the enforcement of social norms than about benefiting the patient.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Was a mental health tech at a psych hospital. Ditto this, when it's the nurse's word against yours and the Ombudsman is already overworked and overwhelmed, you're cooked.

I tried to go to bat for my patients so often, but once the nurses and the aides burn out, they stop doing the job because they care and start doing the job because it's a job. I had nurses who told me to overchart patients so their insurance would pay more and they'd stay longer. Shady, shady shit.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Just like in Soviet Union under Stalin.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Not really, abuse of the mental asylums like this mostly happened after Stalin’s death. Under Stalin, you were simply thrown into the Gulag system.

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[–] [email protected] 162 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It’s important to note the police are currently the people who bring individuals in for the 72hr mental health holds.

I think it is also important to note that it appears many of these officers are not wearing Level IV plates daily, and plainclothes cops may not be wearing any vest at all.

[–] [email protected] 72 points 5 days ago (5 children)

It's also important to note that they're planning on introducing gun control for people considered to be mentally ill. They are going to declare every antifascist mentally ill, and use it to take their guns away.

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[–] [email protected] 139 points 5 days ago (7 children)

What is wrong with people that they would rather live under the boot of dollar-store Hitler than in a tolerant society of people just getting on with life?

[–] [email protected] 81 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They want people to suffer.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 5 days ago

Evil. The word you're looking for is evil.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 5 days ago (2 children)

They believe the propaganda that others hate them or are trying to destroy their way of life, and that dollar-store Hitler is their champion fighting for them.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Donald Ewen Cameron's operation was running from what is today known as the Allen Memorial Institute (AMI), part of the Royal Victoria Hospital, and not to be confused with the non-governmental organization based in Montreal, AMI-Québec Agir contre la maladie mentale.

Love how Donald Ewen Cameron gets exactly one sentence that doesn't even describe anything he did, and is listed under the Canada section with zero mention of being funded by the CIA as part of MKULTRA (which also gets zero mention in the article).

For those who don't know, Donald Ewen Cameron posed as a normal doctor in Canada and took patients who came in with minor symptoms like headaches or anxiety disorders and put them into months-long comas without their consent to run CIA mind control and drug experiments on, including LSD and electroshock treatments at 30-40 times normal levels. The full extent of his abuse will never be known due to the destruction of records (more details on this page), but many people were severely traumatized with long term effects including, "incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents." "Victims often suffered from retrograde amnesia for the rest of their lives and had to relearn most skills they had. Many were in a childlike state and even had to be potty-trained."

After conducting these horrific, abusive "experiments" (torture) on innocent Canadians seeking medical help, with US government's full knowledge and support, Cameron would go on to become president of several different organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, and even the World Psychiatric Association.

This is literally USA level stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 5 days ago (4 children)

This is literally how the soviet union suppressed dissent in the 80s. Disagreement with the party was legally considered a sign of psychological issues. They did this to replace the gulags.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago

WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

Free speech is dead. Democracy is dead. And now the individuals who criticize Trump can be detained in a mental hospital.

Yep, we're back to the 1930s folks

[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

My first thought when reading this is….

We’re mere weeks away from martial law.

My second thoughts was, if this is the distraction- what is the other hand doing?

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I will scream it from the roof tops that he is incompetent and my dislike for him. I’m not scared.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

You're not scared because your great grandmother wasn't thrown out a 4th floor window by Nazis. You really don't understand a dictatorship, do you?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (3 children)

My grandmother was a German citizen. My blood runs deep and I fully understand how you put these people in their place.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago (12 children)

If you guys haven't started rioting by now then I lack any empathy for you with what comes next.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Oh shit! Free mental healthcare.

Fuck Trump!

I'd like to talk about my mother when possible.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 4 days ago (2 children)

What makes you think it would be free?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

This process is already able to be abused to swat people, and the conditions are horrible for the people being held. I've seen it as a MH worker. It's not a hospital, it's a jail. There is no treatment, only observation in cells. It's deeply traumatizing and corrupt. Coercion to get people to sign into voluntary programs ($) in order to be released, or they extend their hold. The whole thing is a travesty.

[–] [email protected] 65 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This is unhinged. I hope it doesn't pass.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 5 days ago

It won't. Even if it did Walz would would veto it.

Every single elected Nazi will probably vote for it, but they don't have a majority and they are super upset about it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

In Soviet America the crackpots will hospitalize you.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 days ago

Awww, they're feeling the pressure huh?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 5 days ago

Oh look it’s incredibly fucked up fascist policy again wow I’m so surprised who could have predicted this ?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago

And here I thought it was Roadkill F. Kennedy that was gonna send me to a concentration camp for taking antidepressants. Welp I guess it's the nuthouse for me instead. At least until being mentally ill at all gets you sent to the "rehabilitation farms."

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 days ago (3 children)

it's legislative shitposting/meme magic. one of them gets an idea for the meme: adding "Trump Derangement Syndrome" as a mental illness to troll the libs. it provokes a reaction in us, because it's 2025 and for all we know the damn thing might pass at the rate the fascists are consuming the state, and the Republicans' base feeds off of our panic and grief, fueling their schadenfreude. Republican voters are the real trolls; these legislators are just their proxies.

basically, this is the meme magic formula that took 4chan from "ironic" Nazi trolls to an outright fascist resurgence across the West, that took Trump from a meme candidate to the Oval Office, that took the 51st State rhetoric from obvious hyperbole to deadly serious. it's "just a joke" when you're defending it, it's "just trolling" when you're pushing it through, and it's "owning the libs" when you're executing on it.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago

We need one to counter and call it the Koolaid Cooperation Clause

[–] [email protected] 45 points 5 days ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 39 points 5 days ago (3 children)

U guys remember that scene in Schindler’s List where the little girl is screaming “Good bye you Jews!” To all the families as they are being marched off to a slave labor camp? Well this is how that sorta shit starts. Make the opposition the demon and get away with anything.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) (noun) - An irrational and unwavering devotion to Donald Trump, characterized by blind loyalty, the dismissal of any criticism as fake news or conspiracy, and an inability to acknowledge his flaws or contradictions.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)
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