Of course, patients aren’t being informed, but as far as I can tell, a girl on my ward was medicated involuntarily today. It’s not that I agree with her on the accuracy of her diagnosis. She hasn’t told me her diagnosis, but she disputes it, and, judging from what she’s told me and other people, I can tell that she’s so psychotic that she doesn’t realize it. But that’s not the point: involuntary drugging is wrong.
It isn’t a safety issue. If someone is a danger to themselves or other people – mind you, not property -, a nurse may justly place them in time-out. One of the nurses here on the ward has told me that it’s policy that they try to use the time-out room as little as possible, but I’m pretty sure the staff here use broader guidelines than the ones I would advocate. But then, if even in time-out a patient continues to be violent, physical restraint may be appropriate – though I am not sure if nurses here are allowed to physically restrain a patient, or if it needs to be a security officer doing so. But that is it as far as preventing a patient from causing physical harm to themselves or others is concerned. Forced drugging is messing with another person’s brain without their consent.
The point is not even that this girl couldn’t make her wishes clear, so that some “she would have wanted this” nonsense logic could be used, like what is being used on children and “low-functioning” adults – because people don’t bother to adjust their communication. No, this girl screamed from time-out that she wasn’t sick and didn’t want treatment. Of course, if you see schizophrenia as a disease because schizophrenic perceptions (delusions as we call them) deviate from the norm, she needs treatment. A few years ago, I read a book written by a psychiatrist, who explained that sometimes the resistance to treatment is part of a person’s disease – for example, paranoid schizophrenics seeing their anti-psychotic medication as poison. But this is enforcing a majority opinion – that the patient’s perception of reality is wrong and undesirable and should be treated with anti-psychotics – upon a minority. So what *is* a good reason to medicate a patient against their will? I’m tempted to ask a nurse about formal guidelines on this, but I’m afraid they won’t answer me cause they don’t want me to be involved with the other girl’s case, and I still don’t have Internet access so can’t look it up. In any case, in my opinion, there is none.
