Lost Patients: Against Their Will
Focus: Adults in the Room
KUOW News and Information
4.9 • 757 Ratings
🗓️ 19 March 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Across the U.S., efforts are underway to make it easier to involuntarily commit people to psychiatric hospitals. It's a reaction to the sight of seriously mentally ill people on the streets and the cries of families who say it's too hard to get a loved one help when they're in crisis. But this gets at one of the most delicate questions our society has faced: When does our belief about what's best for someone override someone's right to decide for themselves?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Lost Patience is about serious mental illness. |
| 0:03.4 | This episode mentions suicide and includes some details about violence, |
| 0:07.7 | so it might be disturbing for some listeners. |
| 0:13.1 | Hello, my name is Kathleen. |
| 0:15.8 | I have a son with schizophrenia, |
| 0:18.9 | and if you would like an inside look at the frustration of trying to get him help. |
| 0:26.7 | I just had the police out here for the fourth time. |
| 0:30.8 | Kathleen is leaving a voicemail for the Seattle Times. |
| 0:34.3 | She's been trying for a couple weeks to get her son committed to a psychiatric hospital. |
| 0:39.6 | Imagine for a moment feeling so defeated you just want someone there to witness how bad things are going. |
| 0:46.7 | I have been trying for so long. He's in a psychotic break and they let him go. Please call me. |
| 0:55.1 | Thank you. |
| 0:55.8 | Bye. |
| 0:57.6 | When you're reporting on problems with psychiatric care, this is one of the most common |
| 1:02.5 | stories you hear. |
| 1:04.2 | A family member, often a parent, trying to get a loved one, often a grown child, into a |
| 1:10.2 | psychiatric hospital. |
| 1:11.8 | The parent wants their kid to be somewhere safe, where they can get treatment, |
| 1:16.2 | but the child doesn't want to go, maybe because they understandably don't want to be confined |
| 1:21.0 | against their will, or because a common symptom of serious mental illness is not believing |
| 1:25.9 | you're sick. So here's where the parent |
| 1:28.7 | crashes into our society's legal standard for taking away a mentally ill person's rights. |
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