"Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: 'The Government is trying to bring in a wider definition of mental disorder and is resisting exclusions which ensure that people cannot be treated as mentally disordered on the grounds of their cultural, political or religious beliefs.
"'When you hear they are also setting up something like this police unit, it raises questions about quite what their intentions are.
"'The use of mental health powers of detention should be confined to the purposes of treatment. But the Government wants to be able to detain someone who is mentally disordered even when the treatment would have no benefit.
"'Combined with the idea that someone could be classed as mentally ill on the grounds of their religious beliefs, it is a very worrying scenario.'"
Indeed, the whole "indefinite detention" process (which Americans living on American soil are subject to) can be based on circular reasoning:
The government's indefinite detention policy -- stripped of it's spin -- is literally insane, and based on circular reasoning. Stripped of p.r., this is the actual policy:
- If you are an enemy combatant or a threat to national security, we will detain you indefinitely until the war is over.
- It is a perpetual war, which will never be over.
- Neither you nor your lawyers have a right to see the evidence against you, nor to face your accusers.
- But trust us, we know you are an enemy combatant and a threat to national security.
- We may torture you (and try to cover up the fact that you were tortured) because you are an enemy combatant, and so basic rights of a prisoner guaranteed by the Geneva Convention don't apply to you.
- Since you admitted that you're a bad guy (while trying to tell us whatever you think we want to hear to make the torture stop), it proves that we should hold you in indefinite detention.
See how that works?
This is an analogy. We are not accusing psych wards of using torture. However, they do often use powerful psychiatric drugs on patients ... which can elicit false confessions.
Are we going to slide into Soviet levels of psychiatric detention of political dissidents? Unless the spread of psychiatric detention without due process of law is checked, the mere belief that the government is interfering with your liberty may become grounds for locking you away.
Update: The stories of psychiatric commitment of political activists in China are horrendous.
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