by Chris Bodenner
In response to a recent post on the ethics of mandatory psychiatric treatment, a reader shares her story:
My brother is schizophrenic. But he’s one of the lucky ones. He has a very involved family, an incredible psychiatrist, and is on medication that works for him. He’s finishing up college. He has a job and a fiancee. Fingers crossed, he’s going to be able to have the sort of normal life that seemed impossible when he first started hearing voices eight years ago.
He never would have reached this point if my family hadn’t managed to involuntary commit him twice. The first time was in the U.S. He was a college student being supported by my parents, but counted as an adult when it came to medical care. Luckily for us, as he’d made suicidal statements, a very understanding judge considered him “a danger to himself” and had him committed and forcibly given medication.
The second time was in Egypt. He was a college student there. His medication made him so exhausted the entire time that he hated it and thought he could safely stop taking it. He relapsed, my sister and I flew to Cairo to track him down, and had him forcibly committed to a private clinic. I signed the papers. It was easy. It’s the only time I’ve ever been thankful for a country’s lack of civil liberties laws.
He was put on a new medicine, which works and doesn’t have the terrible side effects. He’s been sane for five years now, and is very responsible about managing his illness. Now he has complete personal autonomy when it comes to his medical care.
But that’s the point. If someone is in the middle of a schizophrenic episode, they don’t have autonomy over their thoughts, senses or actions. Forcibly putting a person on medication isn’t taking away their autonomy; it’s restoring their autonomy. By committing him, we gave him back his sanity and his personal autonomy, and almost certainly saved his life. It was the best thing my sister and I have ever done.
(Incidentally, he was a very heavy pot smoker as a teenager. And then he moved to hash when he was in Egypt. Our family has a history of severe mental illness, so he was genetically predisposed, but I definitely believe that marijuana contributed to him developing full-blown schizophrenia. I only smoked pot very occasionally in college. I haven’t touched the stuff since my brother became ill. It now terrifies me.)
Previous Dish on cannabis and schizophrenia here.
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