Swedish research finds involuntary psychiatric commitment deadly, confirming patterns seen in the US.
What’s missing is the “care” part.
There is nothing caring about being abducted, locked away and subjected to abuse so violent, so dehumanizing, that some begin to see death as the only way to end the suffering.
That’s right: According to the shocking study by the nation’s Karolinska Institutet, IPCs are causing individuals to kill themselves.
The Karolinska study looked at 72,275 patients discharged after being forcibly institutionalized in 134,514 incidents of IPC from 2010 to 2020.
The study’s findings demonstrate that involuntary psychiatric treatment causes death.
To their horror, researchers found that one out of every 64 discharges ended with a patient dying by suicide.
The door to mental institutions, therefore, functions all too often like a chute leading straight to the killing floor. In fact, 38 of those deceased patients didn’t wait for their release before killing themselves—they died while still being confined in “treatment” centers.
The suicides ultimately add up to a rate that is nearly four times higher than voluntary psychiatric outpatients and a whopping 56 times higher than the general population.
“The results … show that involuntary treatment is a risk marker for suicide,” said John Wallert, associate professor at the institute and main investigator in the study. “It is important to point out that our observational study cannot be interpreted as meaning that involuntary treatment causes suicide.”
Really? Sure it can.
In fact, that is the only way to sensibly interpret the stats: The study’s findings demonstrate that involuntary psychiatric treatment causes death.
A study published in Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology backs this up: “A recent longitudinal study found that patients who reported perceived coercion during hospitalization admission were at greater likelihood of making a suicide attempt in the year following discharge.”
The United Nations Human Rights Office, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) advocate for banning involuntary psychiatric treatment.
