This article was previously published in the Globe and Mail. Crisis hotlines, like Canada’s new 988, promise confidentiality. So why do so many trace calls and texts? * Rob Wipond is an investigative journalist and author of Your Consent Is Not Required: The Rise in Psychiatric Detentions, Forced Treatment, and Abusive Guardianships. * A teen
New data upends common beliefs about asylum closures, deinstitutionalization, and rates of psychiatric coercion. Many people who know almost nothing else about the mental health system can nevertheless recount the story of the “failure” of “deinstitutionalization” in America. The story is repeated so often that it’s widely accepted as if it were a famously indisputable
As contacts to the new 988 hotline number have risen, so have call tracing and police interventions, and 81,000 Americans in the past ten months have been subjected to coercive pressure or covert call tracing followed by unrequested visits from police and ambulance and psychiatric detentions. Read the story at Mad in America.
Despite the caricatures of people with mental illness, there is little evidence 'involuntary care' works. Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper published my opinion article; click here to read Forced Psychiatry is Expanding -- at Society's Peril. (You might have to clear your browser cache memory to see the free version.)
The Los Angeles Times this week published my op-ed about the situation in California, and in the U.S. more broadly. If you've wanted a 980-word 'crash course' intro to my book, this touches on some of the key themes. Opinion: California wants more psychiatric detentions. That’s unlikely to improve anyone’s mental health Another mental health
