Today, over 10% of the global population suffers from mental health problems. Three decades of collaboration between scientists and Buddhist scholars have revealed techniques that allow us to develop our mental well-being and improve the impact we have on our planet.
Part of the Dispatches documentary series (see below).
Outline
Ade Adepitan, Daniel Bogado and former hospital patients gain access to Mexico’s psychiatric institutions to secretly film the horrific and inhumane conditions endured by thousands of men and women.
Dispatches
Dispatches is a British current affairs documentary programme on Channel 4, first broadcast on 30 October 1987. The programme covers issues about British society, politics, health, religion, international current affairs and the environment, and often features a mole inside organisations under journalistic investigation.
A psychiatric advance directive (PAD), also known as a mental health advance directive, is a written document that describes what a person wants to happen if at some time in the future they are judged to be suffering from a mental disorder in such a way that they are deemed unable to decide for themselves or to communicate effectively.
It can inform others about what treatment they want or do not want from psychiatrists or other mental health professionals, and it can identify a person to whom they have given the authority to make decisions on their behalf. A mental health advance directive is one kind of advance health care directive.
Psychiatric advance directives are legal documents used by persons currently enjoying legal capacity to declare their preferences and instructions for future mental health treatment, or to appoint a surrogate decision maker through Health Care Power of Attorney (HCPA), in advance of being targeted by coercive mental health laws, during which they may be stripped of legal capacity to make decisions.
In the United States, although 25 states have now passed legislation in the past decade establishing authority for PADs, there is relatively little public information available to address growing interest in these legal documents. In addition in states without explicit PAD statutes, very similar mental health advance care planning can and does take place under generic HCPA statutes – expanding the audience for PADs to all 50 states (refer to National Resource Centre on Psychiatric Advance Directives).
In addition, states are beginning to recognise legal obligations under the federal Patient Self-Determination Act of 1991, which includes informing all hospital patients that they have a right to prepare advance directives and – with certain caveats – that clinicians are obliged to follow these directives.
Finally, the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organisations (JCAHO) requires behavioural health facilities to ask patients if they have PADs. The Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that patients have the right to formulate advance directives and to have hospital staff and practitioners who provide coercive interventions in the hospital comply with these directives. Hospitals out of compliance risk loss of Medicare and Medicaid revenue.
Proponents of these directives believe thy of followed by treatment providers, crisis planning using PADs will help involuntary detainees retain control over their decision making – especially during times when they are labelled incompetent. Additionally, advocates argue that health care agents will be instrumental in providing inpatient clinicians with information that can be central to patients’ treatment, including history of side effects and relevant medical conditions.
Clinical Benefits
Recent data from a NIH-funded study conducted by researchers at Duke University has shown that creating a PAD with a trained facilitator increases therapeutic alliance with clinicians, enhances involuntary patients’ treatment satisfaction and perceived autonomy, and improves treatment decision-making capacity among people labelled with severe mental illness.
Moreover, PADs provide a transportable document – increasingly accessible through electronic directories – to convey information about a detainee’s treatment history, including medical disorders, emergency contact information, and medication side effects. Clinicians often have limited information about citizens detained and labelled as psychiatric patients who present or are coercively presented and labelled as in crisis. Nonetheless, these are the typical settings in which clinicians are called upon to make critical patient-management and treatment decisions, using whatever limited data may be available. With PADs, clinicians could gain immediate access to relevant information about individual cases and thus improve the quality of clinical decision-making – appropriately managing risk to patients and others’ safety while also enhancing patients’ long-term autonomy.
For these reasons, PADs are seen as an innovative and effective way of enhancing values of autonomy and social welfare for detainees labelled with mental illness. Since PADs are among the first laws that are specifically intended to promote autonomy among people detained under mental health laws, wider use of PADs would empower a traditionally disenfranchised group when targeted for coercive psychiatry.
Barriers
National surveys in the United States indicate that although approximately 70% of people targeted by coercive psychiatry laws would want a PAD if offered assistance in completing one, less than 10% have actually completed a PAD.
Some people detained and forcibly drugged under coercive psychiatry laws report difficulty in understanding advance directives, scepticism about their benefit, and lack of contact with a trusted individual who could serve as proxy decision maker. The sheer complexity of filling out these legal forms, obtaining witnesses, having the documents notarised, and filing the documents in a medical record or registry may pose a formidable barrier.
Recent studies of practitioners of coercive psychiatry’s attitudes about PADs suggest that they are generally supportive of these legal instruments, but have significant concerns about some features of PADs and the feasibility of implementing them in usual coercive intervention settings. Clinicians are concerned about lack of access to PAD documents in a commitment, lack of staff training on PADs, lack of communication between staff across different components of mental health systems, and lack of time to review the advance directive documents.
In a survey conducted of 600 psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers showed that the vast majority thought advance care planning for crises would help improve patients’ overall mental health care. Further, the more clinicians knew about PAD laws, the more favourable were their attitudes toward these practices. For instance, while most psychiatrists, social workers, and psychologists surveyed believed PADs would be helpful to people detained and targeted for forced drugging and electroshock when labelled with severe mental illnesses, clinicians with more legal knowledge about PAD laws were more likely to endorse PADs as a beneficial part of patients’ treatment planning.
However, many clinicians reported NOT knowing enough about how PADs work and specifically indicated they lacked resources to readily help patients fill out PADs. Thus, if clinicians knew more about advance directives and had ready assistance for creating PADs, they said they would be much more likely to help their clients develop crisis plans.
Resources
It thus has become clear that the potential significance of PADs is becoming widely recognized among those targeted for coercive psychiatry, survivors of coercive psychiatry, influential policy makers, clinicians, family members, and patient advocacy groups but that significantly more concerted efforts at dissemination were needed. The community of stakeholders interested in PADs and the broader concept of self-directed care are in need of online resource and gathering place for exchange of views and information.
As a result, in the United States, a collaboration between the Bazelon Centre for Mental Health Law and Duke University has led to creation of the MacArthur Foundation-funded National Resource Center on Psychiatric Advance Directives, the only web portal exclusively devoted to developing a learning community to help people targeted for coercive psychiatry, their families, and clinicians prepare for, and ultimately prevent, coercive psychiatry interventions. The NRC-PAD includes basic information, frequently asked questions, educational webcasts, web blog, most recent research, legal analyses, and state-by-state information on PADs and patient-centred crisis planning. The NRC-PAD website thus includes easy step-by-step information to help those targeted for forced drugging, family, and clinicians complete PADs that mirror the provisions in the PAD statutes.
Voluntary commitment is the act or practice of choosing to admit oneself to a psychiatric hospital, or other mental health facility.
Overview
Unlike in involuntary commitment, the person is free to leave the hospital against medical advice, though there may be a requirement of a period of notice or that the leaving take place during daylight hours. In some jurisdictions, a distinction is drawn between formal and informal voluntary commitment, and this may have an effect on how much notice the individual must give before leaving the hospital. This period may be used for the hospital to use involuntary commitment procedures against the patient. People with mental illness can write psychiatric advance directives in which they can, in advance, consent to voluntary admission to a hospital and thus avoid involuntary commitment.
In the UK, people who are admitted to hospital voluntarily are referred to either as voluntary patients or informal patients. These people are free to discharge against medical advice, unless it is felt that they are at immediate risk, then a doctor can use mental health law to hold people in the hospital for up to 72 hours. People who are detained by mental health law are referred to as formal patients.
In Europe, the treatment of mental illness became a health policy priority under the impetus of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Mental Health Plan for Europe elaborated in 2005. This plan promoted a more effective balance between inpatient hospital care and outpatient care through the development of community mental healthcare services. Since the 1970s, the majority of European countries have shifted away from institutionalised care in large mental hospitals to the integration of patients in their living environment through the provision of home and community care services. Germany, England, France and Italy deinstitutionalised psychiatric care in the second half of the 20th century, but the speed and methods by which it was implemented varied, notably due to differences in social and political contexts. In Italy, the reform movement took place a little later. Until the 1968 Mariotti Law introducing voluntary internment, admission into a psychiatric hospital was only by compulsory commitment and was entered in an individual’s criminal records.
Involuntary commitment, civil commitment, or involuntary hospitalisation (also known informally as sectioning or being sectioned in some jurisdictions, such as the UK) is a legal process through which an individual who is deemed by a qualified agent to have symptoms of severe mental disorder is detained in a psychiatric hospital (inpatient) where they can be treated involuntarily. This treatment may involve the administration of psychoactive drugs, including involuntary administration. In many jurisdictions, people diagnosed with mental health disorders can also be forced to undergo treatment while in the community; this is sometimes referred to as outpatient commitment and shares legal processes with commitment.
Criteria for civil commitment are established by laws which vary between nations. Commitment proceedings often follow a period of emergency hospitalisation, during which an individual with acute psychiatric symptoms is confined for a relatively short duration (e.g. 72 hours) in a treatment facility for evaluation and stabilisation by mental health professionals who may then determine whether further civil commitment is appropriate or necessary. Civil commitment procedures may take place in a court or only involve physicians. If commitment does not involve a court there is normally an appeal process that does involve the judiciary in some capacity, though potentially through a specialist court.
Historically, until the mid-1960s in most jurisdictions in the US, all committals to public psychiatric facilities and most committals to private ones were involuntary. Since then, there have been alternating trends towards the abolition or substantial reduction of involuntary commitment, a trend known as “deinstitutionalisation”. In many currents, individuals can voluntarily admit themselves to a mental health hospital and may have more rights than those who are involuntarily committed. This practice is referred to as voluntary commitment.
In the United States, an indefinite form of commitment is applied to people convicted of some sexual offences.
Purpose
For most jurisdictions, involuntary commitment is applied to individuals believed to be experiencing a mental illness that impairs their ability to reason to such an extent that the agents of the law, state, or courts determine that decisions will be made for the individual under a legal framework. In some jurisdictions, this is a proceeding distinct from being found incompetent. Involuntary commitment is used in some degree for each of the following although different jurisdictions have different criteria. Some jurisdictions limit involuntary treatment to individuals who meet statutory criteria for presenting a danger to self or others. Other jurisdictions have broader criteria. The legal process by which commitment takes place varies between jurisdictions. Some jurisdictions have a formal court hearing where testimony and other evidence may also be submitted where subject of the hearing is typically entitled to legal counsel and may challenge a commitment order through habeas corpus. Other jurisdictions have delegated these power to physicians, though may provide an appeal process that involves the judiciary but may also involve physicians. For example in the UK a mental health tribunal consists of a judge, a medical member, and a lay representative.
First Aid
Training is gradually becoming available in mental health first aid to equip community members such as teachers, school administrators, police officers, and medical workers with training in recognising, and authority in managing, situations where involuntary evaluations of behaviour are applicable under law. The extension of first aid training to cover mental health problems and crises is a quite recent development. A mental health first aid training course was developed in Australia in 2001 and has been found to improve assistance provided to persons with an alleged mental illness or mental health crisis. This form of training has now spread to a number of other countries (Canada, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Singapore, Scotland, England, Wales, and the United States). Mental health triage may be used in an emergency room to make a determination about potential risk and apply treatment protocols.
Observation
Observation is sometimes used to determine whether a person warrants involuntary commitment. It is not always clear on a relatively brief examination whether a person should be committed.
Austria, Belgium, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Russia, Taiwan, Ontario (Canada), and the United States have adopted commitment criteria based on the presumed danger of the defendant to self or to others.
People with suicidal thoughts may act on these impulses and harm or kill themselves.
People with psychosis are occasionally driven by their delusions or hallucinations to harm themselves or others. Research has found that those who suffer from schizophrenia are between 3.4 and 7.4 times more likely to engage in violent behaviour than members of the general public. However, because other confounding factors such as childhood adversity and poverty are correlated with both schizophrenia and violence it can be difficult to determine whether this effect is due to schizophrenia or other factors. In an attempt to avoid these confounding factors, researchers have tried comparing the rates of violence amongst people diagnosed with schizophrenia to their siblings in a similar manner to twin studies. In these studies people with schizophrenia are found to be between 1.3 and 1.8 times more likely to engage in violent behaviour.
People with certain types of personality disorders can occasionally present a danger to themselves or others.
This concern has found expression in the standards for involuntary commitment in every US state and in other countries as the danger to self or others standard, sometimes supplemented by the requirement that the danger be imminent. In some jurisdictions, the danger to self or others standard has been broadened in recent years to include need-for-treatment criteria such as “gravely disabled”.
Starting in the 1960s, there has been a worldwide trend toward moving psychiatric patients from hospital settings to less restricting settings in the community, a shift known as deinstitutionalisation. Because the shift was typically not accompanied by a commensurate development of community-based services, critics say that deinstitutionalisation has led to large numbers of people who would once have been inpatients as instead being incarcerated or becoming homeless. In some jurisdictions, laws authorising court-ordered outpatient treatment have been passed in an effort to compel individuals with chronic, untreated severe mental illness to take psychiatric medication while living outside the hospital (e.g. Laura’s Law and Kendra’s Law).
Before the 1960s deinstitutionalisation there were earlier efforts to free psychiatric patients. Philippe Pinel (1745-1826) ordered the removal of chains from patients.
In a study of 269 patients from Vermont State Hospital done by Courtenay M. Harding and associates, about two-thirds of the ex-patients did well after deinstitutionalisation.
Around the World
France
In 1838, France enacted a law to regulate both the admissions into asylums and asylum services across the country. Édouard Séguin developed a systematic approach for training individuals with mental deficiencies, and, in 1839, he opened the first school for the intellectually disabled. His method of treatment was based on the idea that the intellectually disabled did not suffer from disease.
United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, provision for the care of the mentally ill began in the early 19th century with a large state-led effort. Public mental asylums were established in Britain after the passing of the 1808 County Asylums Act. This empowered magistrates to build rate-supported asylums in every county to house the many ‘pauper lunatics’. Nine counties first applied, and the first public asylum opened in 1812 in Nottinghamshire. Parliamentary Committees were established to investigate abuses at private madhouses like Bethlem Hospital – its officers were eventually dismissed and national attention was focused on the routine use of bars, chains and handcuffs and the filthy conditions the inmates lived in. However, it was not until 1828 that the newly appointed Commissioners in Lunacy were empowered to license and supervise private asylums.
The Lunacy Act 1845 was an important landmark in the treatment of the mentally ill, as it explicitly changed the status of mentally ill people to patients who required treatment. The Act created the Lunacy Commission, headed by Lord Shaftesbury, to focus on lunacy legislation reform. The commission was made up of eleven Metropolitan Commissioners who were required to carry out the provisions of the Act; the compulsory construction of asylums in every county, with regular inspections on behalf of the Home Secretary. All asylums were required to have written regulations and to have a resident qualified physician. A national body for asylum superintendents – the Medico-Psychological Association – was established in 1866 under the Presidency of William A. F. Browne, although the body appeared in an earlier form in 1841.
At the turn of the century, England and France combined had only a few hundred individuals in asylums. By the late 1890s and early 1900s, this number had risen to the hundreds of thousands. However, the idea that mental illness could be ameliorated through institutionalisation was soon disappointed. Psychiatrists were pressured by an ever-increasing patient population. The average number of patients in asylums kept on growing. Asylums were quickly becoming almost indistinguishable from custodial institutions, and the reputation of psychiatry in the medical world had hit an extreme low.
United States
In the United States, the erection of state asylums began with the first law for the creation of one in New York, passed in 1842. The Utica State Hospital was opened approximately in 1850. The creation of this hospital, as of many others, was largely the work of Dorothea Lynde Dix, whose philanthropic efforts extended over many states, and in Europe as far as Constantinople. Many state hospitals in the United States were built in the 1850s and 1860s on the Kirkbride Plan, an architectural style meant to have curative effect.
In the United States and most other developed societies, severe restrictions have been placed on the circumstances under which a person may be committed or treated against their will as such actions have been ruled by the United States Supreme Court and other national legislative bodies as a violation of civil rights and/or human rights (e.g. O’Connor v. Donaldson). Thus a person is rarely committed against their will and it is illegal for a person to be committed for an indefinite period of time.
United Nations
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 46/119, “Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care“, is a non-binding resolution advocating certain broadly drawn procedures for the carrying out of involuntary commitment. These principles have been used in many countries where local laws have been revised or new ones implemented. The UN runs programmes in some countries to assist in this process.
Criticism
The dangers of institutions were chronicled and criticized by reformers almost since their foundation. Charles Dickens was an outspoken and high-profile early critic, and several of his novels, in particular Oliver Twist and Hard Times demonstrate his insight into the damage that institutions can do to human beings.
Enoch Powell, when Minister for Health in the early 1960s, was a later opponent who was appalled by what he witnessed on his visits to the asylums, and his famous “water tower” speech in 1961 called for the closure of all NHS asylums and their replacement by wards in general hospitals:
“There they stand, isolated, majestic, imperious, brooded over by the gigantic water-tower and chimney combined, rising unmistakable and daunting out of the countryside – the asylums which our forefathers built with such immense solidity to express the notions of their day. Do not for a moment underestimate their powers of resistance to our assault. Let me describe some of the defenses which we have to storm.”
Scandal after scandal followed, with many high-profile public inquiries. These involved the exposure of abuses such as unscientific surgical techniques such as lobotomy and the widespread neglect and abuse of vulnerable patients in the US and Europe. The growing anti-psychiatry movement in the 1960s and 1970s led in Italy to the first successful legislative challenge to the authority of the mental institutions, culminating in their closure.
During the 1970s and 1990s the hospital population started to fall rapidly, mainly because of the deaths of long-term inmates. Significant efforts were made to re-house large numbers of former residents in a variety of suitable or otherwise alternative accommodation. The first 1,000+ bed hospital to close was Darenth Park Hospital in Kent, swiftly followed by many more across the UK. The haste of these closures, driven by the Conservative governments led by Margaret Thatcher and John Major, led to considerable criticism in the press, as some individuals slipped through the net into homelessness or were discharged to poor quality private sector mini-institutions.
Wrongful Involuntary Commitment
Mental health professionals have, on occasion, wrongfully deemed individuals to have symptoms of a mental disorder, and thereby commit the individual for treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Claims of wrongful commitment are a common theme in the anti-psychiatry movement.
In 1860, the case of Elizabeth Packard, who was wrongfully committed that year and filed a lawsuit and won thereafter, highlighted the issue of wrongful involuntary commitment. In 1887, investigative journalist Nellie Bly went undercover at an asylum in New York City to expose the terrible conditions that mental patients at the time had to deal with. She published her findings and experiences as articles in New York World, and later made the articles into one book called Ten Days in a Mad-House.
In the first half of the twentieth century there were a few high-profile cases of wrongful commitment based on racism or punishment for political dissenters. In the former Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were used as prisons to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society. British playwright Tom Stoppard wrote Every Good Boy Deserves Favour about the relationship between a patient and his doctor in one of these hospitals. Stoppard was inspired by a meeting with a Russian exile. In 1927, after the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States, demonstrator Aurora D’Angelo was sent to a mental health facility for psychiatric evaluation after she participated in a rally in support of the anarchists. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s in Canada, 20,000 Canadian children, called the Duplessis orphans, were wrongfully certified as being mentally ill and as a result were wrongfully committed to psychiatric institutions where they were forced to take psychiatric medication that they did not need, and were abused. They were named after Maurice Duplessis, the premier of Quebec at the time, who deliberately committed these children to in order to misappropriate additional subsidies from the federal government. Decades later in the 1990s, several of the orphans sued Quebec and the Catholic Church for the abuse and wrongdoing. In 1958, black pastor and activist Clennon Washington King Jr. tried enrolling at the University of Mississippi, which at the time was white, for summer classes; the local police secretly arrested and involuntarily committed him to a mental hospital for 12 days.
Patients are able to sue if they believe that they have been wrongfully committed. In one instance, Junius Wilson, an African American man, was committed to Cherry Hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1925 for an alleged crime without a trial or conviction. He was castrated. He continued to be held at Cherry Hospital for the next 67 years of his life. It turned out he was deaf rather than mentally ill.
In many American states sex offenders who have completed a period of incarceration can be civilly committed to a mental institution based on a finding of dangerousness due to a mental disorder. Although the United States Supreme Court determined that this practice does not constitute double jeopardy, organisations such as the American Psychiatric Association (APA) strongly oppose the practice. The Task Force on Sexually Dangerous Offenders, a component of APA’s Council on Psychiatry and Law, reported that “in the opinion of the task force, sexual predator commitment laws represent a serious assault on the integrity of psychiatry, particularly with regard to defining mental illness and the clinical conditions for compulsory treatment. Moreover, by bending civil commitment to serve essentially non-medical purposes, statutes threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the medical model of commitment.”
O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court in mental health law ruling that a state cannot constitutionally confine a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by themselves or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends.
Since the trial court jury found, upon ample evidence, that petitioner did so confine respondent, the Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s conclusion that petitioner had violated respondent’s right to liberty.
Kenneth Donaldson (confined patient) had been held for 15 years in Florida State Hospital at Chattahoochee, due to needs of “care, maintenance, and treatment.” He filed a lawsuit against the hospital and staff members claiming they had robbed him of his constitutional rights, by confining him against his will. Donaldson won his case (including monetary damages) in United States District Court, which was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. In 1975, the United States Supreme Court agreed that Donaldson had been improperly confined but vacated the award of damages. On remand, the Fifth Circuit ordered that a new trial on damages be held.
A finding of “mental illness” alone cannot justify a State’s locking a person up against his will and keeping him indefinitely in simple custodial confinement. Assuming that that term can be given a reasonably precise content and that the “mentally ill” can be identified with reasonable accuracy, there is still no constitutional basis for confining such persons involuntarily if they are dangerous to no one and can live safely in freedom.
May the State confine the mentally ill merely to ensure them a living standard superior to that they enjoy in the private community? That the State has a proper interest in providing care and assistance to the unfortunate goes without saying. But the mere presence of mental illness does not disqualify a person from preferring his home to the comforts of an institution. Moreover, while the State may arguably confine a person to save him from harm, incarceration is rarely if ever a necessary condition for raising the living standards of those capable of surviving safely in freedom, on their own or with the help of family or friends. May the State fence in the harmless mentally ill solely to save its citizens from exposure to those whose ways are different? One might as well ask if the State, to avoid public unease, could incarcerate all who are physically unattractive or socially eccentric. Mere public intolerance or animosity cannot constitutionally justify the deprivation of a person’s physical liberty. In short, a State cannot constitutionally confine without more a non-dangerous individual who is capable of surviving safely in freedom by himself or with the help of willing and responsible family members or friends.
Kenneth Donaldson
The origins of Donaldson’s institutionalisation began in 1943, at age 34, when he suffered a traumatic episode. He was hospitalized and received treatment, before resuming life with his family.
In 1956 Donaldson travelled to Florida to visit his elderly parents. While there, Donaldson reported that he believed one of his neighbours in Philadelphia might be poisoning his food. His father, worried that his son suffered from paranoid delusions, petitioned the court for a sanity hearing. Donaldson was evaluated, diagnosed with “paranoid schizophrenia,” and civilly committed to the Florida State mental health system. At his commitment trial, Donaldson did not have legal counsel present to represent his case. Once he entered the Florida hospital, Donaldson was placed with dangerous criminals, even though he had never been proved to be dangerous to himself or others. His ward was understaffed, with only one doctor (who happened to be an obstetrician) for over 1,000 male patients. There were no psychiatrists or counsellors, and the only nurse on site worked in the infirmary.
He spent 15 years as a patient; he did not receive any treatment, actively refusing it, and attempting to secure his release. Throughout his stay he denied he was ever mentally ill, and refused to be put into a halfway house.
Donaldson later wrote a book about his experience as a mental patient titled Insanity Inside Out.
The obligatory dangerousness criterion is a principle present in the mental health law of many developed countries. It mandates evidence of dangerousness to oneself or to others before involuntary treatment for mental illness. The term “dangerousness” refers to one’s ability to hurt oneself or others physically or mentally within an imminent time frame, and the harm caused must have a long-term effect on the person(s).
Psychiatric hospitals and involuntary commitment have been around for hundreds and even thousands of years around the world, but the obligatory dangerousness criterion was created in the United States in the 1900s. The criterion is a controversial topic, with opponents claiming that it is unethical and potentially harmful. Supporters claim that the criterion is necessary to protect the mentally ill and those impacted by their involuntary treatment.
Background
If a court determines that a person may cause long-term harm to themselves or others, then the person can be hospitalised or be required to outpatient treatment and treated involuntarily. In order to be released, the court must determine whether the person is no longer dangerous. The length of time that a person is involuntarily hospitalised varies and is determined by the state.
An obligatory dangerousness criterion has two main parts:
First is the Latin phrase parens patriae, which translates to “parent of his or her nation,” which “assigns to the government a responsibility to intervene on behalf of citizens who cannot act in their own best interest”.
The second part “requires a state to protect the interests of its citizens,” meaning that the government must do what it can to care for greater society, which may involve limiting one individual’s rights to avoid harming the greater society.
Brief History
Psychiatric asylums and guardianship over the mentally ill have been present for centuries. In Greece, individuals, such as Hippocrates, believed that those with mental illnesses should be separated from others and maintained within a safe, healthy environment. Ancient Rome allowed guardianship over mentally ill individuals. In the US, psychiatric hospitals were not established until the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Before their establishment, individuals suffering with mental illnesses were imprisoned or kept from society. After their establishment, anyone could be admitted to a psychiatric hospital if a family member brought them and a physician agreed to provide a treatment. Individuals could be at the hospital indefinitely until a court ruled they could be released.
An obligatory dangerousness criterion was officially established in the United States in 1964 by the Ervin Act in Washington DC. It provided a more lenient interpretation of “dangerousness” as well as alternatives to involuntary hospitalisation. It is meant to protect individuals with mental health disorders on the basis of parens patria. In order to be involuntary hospitalised under the obligatory dangerousness criterion, one must have a mental illness, and most states also require that the individual is in need of medical treatment for the illness.
In 1964, Washington D.C. established that an individual may only be involuntarily hospitalised if the individual has a mental illness, may be threat to others or their self in the near future, or is unable to survive on their own. States followed suit and began implementing a dangerousness criteria, as well. In the 1975 Supreme Court case, O’Connor v. Donaldson, the Supreme Court ruled that the individual must have a mental illness, pose a known threat to the safety of their self or others, be unable to care for themselves, or need psychiatric care. States adjusted their rules so that a patient’s involuntary hospitalisation would be re-evaluated over the span of a short period of time, ranging from two days to two weeks before a patient could have a court hearing to potentially be released.
Controversy
The obligatory dangerousness criterion is controversial. Supporters claim that the criterion is necessary in order to ensure that those who are in vital need of psychiatric care will receive it, and to prevent the mentally ill individual from potentially harming themselves or others. They also note that mental health disorders can impair one’s judgement, for example, if an individual with depression does not think that they need help. They argue that psychiatric care often involves some form of hospitalisation or treatment, and as a result, “involuntary hospitalization, or civil commitment, has been a mainstay of psychiatric care” since the field first began. Some individuals who have been involuntarily hospitalised perceived their experience to be beneficial and fair. Lastly, they also note how many states require that the least invasive measures be taken before involuntary hospitalisation is considered.
Its opponents claim that an obligatory dangerousness criterion is unethical. Some believe it denies the individual of consent, is discriminatory based on mental health, and may increase the patient’s risk of suicide, psychotic symptoms, or other harmful behaviours. They worry an obligatory dangerousness criterion might lead individuals without a serious mental illness to be involuntarily hospitalised, or that individuals without a serious mental illness will be involuntarily hospitalised as a “preventative” means. Those who oppose an obligatory dangerousness criterion also argue that there are less restrictive alternatives to involuntary hospitalisation that can help those with a mental illness.
1934 – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Hungarian-American psychologist and academic.
People (Deaths)
2007 – Yıldırım Aktuna, Turkish psychiatrist and politician, Turkish Minister of Health (b. 1930).
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hungarian: Csíkszentmihályi Mihály, born 29 September 1934) is a Hungarian-American psychologist.
He recognised and named the psychological concept of flow, a highly focused mental state conducive to productivity. He is the Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake Forest College.
Yıldırım Aktuna
Yıldırım Aktuna (1930 to 29 September 2007) was a Turkish psychiatrist, politician, district mayor and government minister in a number of cabinets.
Military Career
His first post was chief physician officer of the 26th Brigade at the 66th Army Division. After completing a one-year English language course at the Army Language School in Ankara, Aktuna was sent to the United States, where he attended advanced education in general medicine at the Brooke Army Medical Center in Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio between 1958-1959.
Having returned home, Aktuna specialised in neuropsychiatry at the Gülhane Military Medical Academy in Ankara, finishing in 1962. He then served in the army as medical officer at various places in Turkey. Between 1967-1989, he was lecturer at the Kabul Military Hospital in Afghanistan. In 1970, he retired from the Turkish Army in the rank of a lieutenant colonel.
Civil Service
Switched over to civil service, he firstly was appointed Assistant Chief Physician at the Psychology Clinic of Şişli Children’s Hospital in Istanbul. He later became the chief of that clinic.
Between 1972-1973, Aktuna sojourned in Austria to pursue advanced studies in neurology and electroencephalography (EEG) at the Neurological Clinic of the University of Vienna.
In 1979, Yıldırım Aktuna was appointed Chief Physician of the Bakırköy Psychiatric Hospital in Istanbul, the largest of its art in the country. He modernised the hospital, and devoted himself to raise consciousness for public mental health and to develop contemporary policies on this subject. He established in 1983 an alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre within this hospital, the first facility in Turkey to conduct medical and psychotherapeutic treatment and research for dependency on psychoactive substances as well. For these activities, he was honoured several times by various organisations.
Haltlose personality disorder is a personality disorder in which affected individuals possess psychopathic traits built upon short-sighted selfishness and irresponsible hedonism, combined with an inability to anchor one’s identity to a future or past. The symptoms of Haltlose are characterised by a lack of inhibition.
Refer to Hysteroid Dysphoria. Other names have included Willenloser Psychopath, Unstable Psychopath, Unstable Drifter, and Disinhibited Personality.
Described by Emil Kraepelin and Gustav Aschaffenburg in the early twentieth century, and further distinguished by Karl Jaspers, Eugen and Manfred Bleuler, it has been colloquially dubbed psychopathy with an “absence of intent or lack of will”.
With other hyperthymics, Haltlose personalities were considered to make up “the main component of serious crime”, and are studied as one of the strains of psychopathy relevant to criminology as they are “very easily involved in the criminal history” and may become aggressors or homicidal. Their psychopathy is difficult to identify as a shallow sense of conformity is always present. A 2020 characterisation of mental illnesses noted of the Haltlose that “these people constantly need vigilant control, leadership, authoritarian mentor, encouragement and behavior correction” to avoid an idle lifestyle, involvement in antisocial groups, crime and substance abuse. The marked tendencies towards suggestibility are off-set by demonstrations of “abnormal rigidity and intransigence and firmness”.
After discovering a guilty conscience due to some act or omission they have committed, “they then live under constant fear of the consequences of their action or inaction, fear of something bad that might strike them” in stark opposition to their apparent carelessness or hyperthymic temperament, which is itself frequently a subconscious reaction to overwhelming fear. They frequently withdraw from society. Given their tendency to “exaggerate, to embroider their narratives, to picture themselves in ideal situations, to invent stories”, this fear then manifests as being “apt to blame others for their offences, frequently seeking to avoid responsibility for their actions”. They do not hold themselves responsible for their failed life, instead identifying as an ill-treated martyr.
They were characterised as Dégénérés supérieurs, demonstrating normal or heightened intellect but degraded moral standards. Of the ten types of psychopaths defined by Schneider, only the Gemütlose (compassionless) and the Haltlose “had high levels of criminal behavior” without external influence, and thus made up the minority of psychopaths who are “virtually doomed to commit crimes” by virtue only of their own constitution. Frequently changing their determined goals, a haltlose psychopath is “constantly looking for an external hold, it doesn’t really matter whether they join occult or fascist movements”. The ability to moderate external influence was considered one of three characteristics necessary to form an overall personality, thus leaving Haltlose patients without a functional personality of their own. A study of those with haltlose personality disorder concludes “In all of those cases, the result was a continuous social decline that ended in asocial-parasitic existence or an antisocial-criminal life”.
Haltlose has one of the most unfavourable prognoses of psychopathies. To exist safely, such a psychopath requires “a harsh lifestyle” and constant supervision.
Etymology and Criticism
“Haltlos” is a German word that contextually refers to a floundering, aimless, irresponsible lifestyle, and the diagnosis is named “Haltlose” using the feminine variation on the word. They are commonly clinically termed an “unstable psychopath”, which is differentiated from emotionally unstable personality disorder (an alternative name for borderline personality disorder). It was remarked in early studies that England, the United States and northern European countries did not use the same typology, not distinguishing between those psychopaths who were unstable and those who were “Unstable Psychopaths”.
It has been dubbed a part of “German-speaking psychiatry”. The term “Haltlose” is more common in the study of psychiatry, while “Willenlose” is preferred in sociology. Some like Karl Birnbaum prefer the term “Haltlose”, while others like Kurt Schneider prefer “Willenlos” shifting focus off their lack of self-control and opposed to the moralist tones of those like Birnbaum who had described the Haltlose as unable to grasp “important ideal values such as honor and morality, duty and responsibility, as well as material ones such as prosperity and health”. In 1928, Eugen Kahn argued Willenlose was a misnomer, as the patients demonstrated plenty of “will” and simply lacked the ability to translate it into action. Historically, researchers such as Schneider argued that instability is the symptom, whereas lack of volition is the underlying cause. It is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), possibly due to a modern belief that the concept of volition is outdated and overshadowed by the concepts of motivation and arousal or drive.
In 1963, Karl Jaspers defined the term as “those who have no willpower at all, the drifters, simply echoing any influence that impinges on them”. However, in 1976, the Government of Canada listed the alternate term “Unstable drifter” in a psychiatric criminology context as a problematic term for which they could not readily offer a French translation in accordance with their bilingualism laws. Similar issues have arisen trying to translate it to other languages, including Turkish. Ultimately the diagnosis was handicapped by the issues of translation, leading to criticism of “the impoverishment of psychiatric vocabulary” that led to declining research and use.
In the early 20th century, Aschaffenburg distanced himself from accusations that the diagnosis was intended to protect criminals from punishment, emphasizing instead that those with Haltlose personality disorder “generally cannot be exculpated”.
Dr. Friedrich Stumpfl cautioned against what he saw as a trend of diagnosing haltlose personality disorder without investigating comorbidities that may be even more pronounced. In condemning the idea of personality disorders generally, Joachim-Ernst Meyer suggested in 1976 that Schneider’s early description of the Haltlose personality disorder, as a lack of determination in aspects of life including parenting, could just as easily be described as an example of a neurosis rather than a psychopathy if studied only by its aetiology rather than its symptoms, and used it as an example of the nature versus nurture debate that surrounded all personality disorders. Critics ceded that the term “Haltlose” remained of value in educational and therapeutic contexts, while suggesting future collaboration between psychiatric research and sociologists would allow further definition.
Recently, it has been criticised as a “diagnosis of convenience [that] avoids all further deliberations about a psychopathic personality”. Dr. DM Svrakic and Dr. M Divac-Jovanovic suggested the ICD-10 explanations of Haltlose, Immature and Psychoneurotic personality disorders appeared “dubious”, and sociologist James Cosgrave found psychiatric use to represent a “fringe figure”. A graduate student at Bochumer Stadt & Studierendenzeitung condemned the historical diagnosis from an LGBT perspective, opining that “incredibly oppressive language” had been used by the psychiatrists studying it such as “pathological femininity”.
It may be that the evolution of test-batteries have minimised diagnoses of Haltlosen, differentiating it from some newer models in psychiatry.
Physiology
Described as bearing a “pronounced heredity burden”, the propensity for Haltlose has also been suggested to be passed only through the maternal genes. Only able to offer “primitive reactions” and “poor and immature judgement”, they are noted to display an absolute lack of purpose in their lives “except for the simple biological need to continue living”.
Gustav von Bergmann, a specialist in internal medicine rather than psychiatry, wrote in 1936 that Haltlose personality disorder was entirely biological rather than fostered through psychological experiences. Indeed, Dr. Hans Luxenburger proposed in 1939 that a toxin in the metabolism, when present with Haltlose personality disorder, might be responsible for asthenic difficulties such as shortness of breath, nausea, and cluster headaches. Dr. E.H. Hughes noted that two-thirds of Huntington’s disease patients had previously been diagnosed as Haltlose or Gemütlose psychopaths.
A study in 1949 of different psychopathies under examination by electroencephalography recordings showed that borderline personalities and haltlose personalities had increased levels of dysrhythmia, whereas other subtypes of psychopathy did not show variation. An individual in 1931 was noted as having initially improved but relapsed “because of encephalitis”. As with other personality disorders, a 1923 article suggests it can also be acquired through encephalitis. In 2006, an Essex warehouse employee who suffered head injuries was awarded £3 million compensation on the basis it had caused him to develop Haltlose personality disorder, seeking out prostitutes and pornography which destroyed his marriage.
Mistakes cannot be fully avoided when placing children under care. even an experienced specialist often cannot distinguish between a blossoming hebephrenia and a Gemutlose or Haltlose personality disorder. Even with weeks of institutional observation, the certainty of our diagnostic aids can remain doubtful…under certain circumstances a doctor will advise medical care even at the risk of learning the patient cannot improve as a result of mental illness and will end up in a madhouse. Kurt Schneider.
Dr. W. Blankenburg posited in 1968 that those with haltlose personality disorder exhibited less categorical orientation than those patients who were simply unstable. By 1962, lobotomy was being tested as a possible means to limit the chaotic thinking of the Haltlose personality.
Kraepelin, in noting “an increased risk of criminal behavior”, estimated that 64% of men and 20% of women with Haltlose descended into alcoholism in the early twentieth century. The frequent intersection between HLPD and alcoholism means modern clinical researchers may use “haltlose” as a grouping when separating subjects by disposition. Research in 1915 noted an increased propensity for lavish spending, and overconsumption of coffee, tea and medication.
One 1954 study suggested female Haltlose patients may experience “manic excitement” during their menses. According to 1949 research, they have a higher rate of homosexuality, and 1939 evidence suggested that masturbation is more prevalent in Haltlose and Gemütlose (compassionless) psychopaths than in other disorders, and Haltlose erethics leave them “usually very sexually excited” and seeking out “atypical, irregular and unusual” debauchery whether in brothels, adultery or destroying marriages.
They demonstrate similarities to hysteroid dysphoria. In 1928, it was proposed that Fantasy prone personality was likely a subset of Haltlose personalities, suffering from maladaptive daydreaming and Absorption.
The eugenicist Verners Kraulis of the University of Latvia noted it was frequently comorbid with Histrionic personality disorder.
Symptoms
According to 1968 research, haltlose personality disorder is frequently comorbid with other mental health diagnoses, and rarely appears isolated on its own. Hans Heinze focused on his belief that Haltlose ultimately stemmed from a sense of inferiority, while Kramer held there was a battling inferiority complex and superiority complex.
The Haltlose were said to have a dynamic instinctual drive to “cling” to others, to avoid a horrible loneliness they fear – but they will always represent a “lurking danger” because they were unable to actually maintain the necessary relationship and were in a class with the “forever abandoned”. According to 1926 research, they view all interaction as a means of winning “indulgence from some people, help from other people”.
One early study indicated that 7.5% of psychopaths were Haltlose, and Kraepelin estimated that his own practice determined fewer than 20% of psychopaths he saw were Haltlose. However more recent studies, after differentiating out newer diagnoses, have suggested that it may be fewer than 1% of psychopaths who are truly Haltlose.
Described in 1922 as both “moody” and “passive”, they quickly switch from over-confidence in victory to sullen defiance.
Their emotional lability means they alternate between projecting an optimistic and competent image claiming they are “destined to do great things”, and a more honest cynicism and depression. Research in 1925 indicates they display “great emotional irritability, which may result in violent loss of temper…and interpret every limitation as an undeserved insult” and have a “pronounced lust for argument”. The symptoms are considered to worsen if patients are granted greater independence “in the home and in their work”.
Their self schema only encompasses the immediate present. They are described as “living in a random location and moment”. A common pitfall in therapy is that they proved in 1917 to be “very superficial, they easily acquire knowledge but do not apply it in any way and soon forget it”.
The essence of these people…playthings of external influences, allowing themselves to be carried away by events like a leaf in the wind! …Impermanence is everything. In one hour, they are happy and excited with the whole world lying open for them in the splendor of the joy of life, but the next hour casts aside this optimism and the future now seems bleak, gray on gray…sympathies and antipathies quickly replace each other, what was worshipped yesterday is burned today, and despite all oaths of eternal loyalty, the best friend is transformed into the deeply-loathed enemy overnight.” Dr. L. Scholz, Anomale Kinder, Berlin, 1919.
Those with HLPD display “a number of endearing qualities, charming with an apparent emotional warmth, but also an enhanced suggestibility and a superficiality of affect”, which can lead to unrealistic optimism. and “wandering through life without ever taking firm root”. They are also noted as “absolutely indifferent to others…likes to live for [their] pleasure today, does not make plans not only for the future but even for tomorrow, studying and working are not for them”. Persons with HLPD typically lack any deep knowledge, and “look for easy life and pleasures”. They have been described as “conquerers with an appearance of emotional warmth”.
Persons with HLPD were noted as struggling with hypochondria in 1907. They also struggle with alcoholism, and identify with antisocial personality disorder.
Kraepelin said they were “apt to take senseless journeys, perhaps even becoming vagabonds”. Kraepelin argued only lifelong wanderlust was tied to Haltlose, whereas Kahn argued that the Haltlose often lost their wanderlust as they aged and preferred to settle into mediocrity. Some make their fortune, but the disappearance of less fortunate travelers is not mentioned by their families who considered them to have been burdensome.
To early twentieth-century researchers, they appeared amiable, well-spoken, self-confident and to be making strong efforts to improve their weaknesses, thus making a misleading first impression and endearing themselves to superiors. The lack of a sense of identity, or internal support, was thought to a lack of resistance to both external and internal impulses in 1927. Their “gradual deterioration in the swamp of neediness and immorality” still does not make a lasting impression on the patients. Thus Haltlose patients who recognize their shortcomings were thought to possibly be overwhelmed by a subconscious fear about participating in the world without restraints in a 1924 account. Similarly, researchers in the early twentieth-century believed that the inauthenticity of their projected self and superficiality of knowledge means that when “someone who is really superior to [them]”, after a period of stiffly asserting themselves hoping to avoid submission, will ultimately and without explanation fully embrace the position of the other.
Pathological lying is closely linked to Haltlose personality disorder, with Arthur Kielholz noting “They lie like children…this activity always remains just a game which never satisfies them and leaves them with a guilty conscious because neither the super ego nor the Id get their due…Since they are offering such a daydream as a gift, they consider themselves entitled to extract some symbolic gift in return through fraud or theft”. Adler maintained “Memory is usually poor and untrustworthy…often they seem to have no realization of the truth”, while Homburger felt they held “no sense of objectivity, no need for truth or consistency”.
According to early accounts, choices are made, often in mirroring others around them, but “do not leave even a passing imprint on the person’s identity”. Thus, they can “behave properly for a while under good leadership”, and are not to be trusted in leadership positions themselves. Gannushkin noted they must be urged, scolded or encouraged “with a stick, as they say”. They demonstrate poor mood control and “react quickly to immediate circumstances” since “mood variation can be extreme and fluctuate wildly”, which led to the denotation “unstable psychopath”.
They have been described as “cold-blooded”, but must be differentiated from dependent personality disorder, as the two can appear similar, due to the artifice of the Haltlose patient, despite having starkly opposing foundations. Persons with Dependent Personality Disorder are defined by a tendency to embarrassment, and submissiveness which are not genuine facets of those with Haltlose even if they mimic such. Haltlose was thus deemed the “more troublesome” personality in 1955.
Childhood Origins, and Later Role of Family
“Whomever is abandoned in youth to the inexorable misery of existence, and at the same time is exposed to all manner of seductions, will find it very difficult to curb their constantly incited desires, and to instead force themselves through to the lofty vantage of moral self-assertion. Kraepelin speaking about the Haltlose, 1915.
It has been proposed that haltlose personality disorder may arise from “traumatization through maternal indolence” or institutionalisation in early life, although without definite conclusion. It may present in childhood simply as a hypomanic reaction to the loss of a parent or incest object. They often display a fear of abandonment that appeared in childhood, a common borderline personality disorder symptom. Male Haltlose personalities may come out of families with a pampering, over-protective and domineering mother with a weak father. Homburger noted the “childhood and youth of the Haltlose are extraordinarily sad”. It is possible, but rare, for Haltlose personalities to develop within healthy family structures.
Gerhardt Nissen referenced the possibility of intrauterine factors in the shaping of anti-social behaviours in Haltlose psychopaths, while noting the concept of psychopathy had been so weakened in modern psychopathology as to be indistinguishable from other conditions. Others have suggested there is a strong heredity correlation, as the parents often also display Haltlose personality disorder, especially the mother. Raising a haltlose child can, in some cases, destroy the family structure by forcing relatives to take opposing positions, provoking disagreement and creating an atmosphere of bitterness and dejection. They have been clinically described as disappointments to their families, and are unable to feel actual love for their parents and are indifferent to the hardships of relatives – since all relationships are seen only as potential means towards acquiring pleasure.
Care must be taken in making Haltlose diagnoses of children, since “the traits of instability of purpose, lack of forethought, suggestibility, egoism and superficiality of affect…are to some extent normal in childhood”. Children with haltlose personality disorder demonstrate a marked milieu dependency, which may be a cause rather than effect of the Haltlose. It is of great importance that only children with Haltlose have peers and friends to surround themselves to try and learn associations and behaviours. They often become sexually active at a young age but delayed sexual maturity, and as adults retain a psychophysical infantilism. Regressive addictions amongst Haltlose psychopaths typically are infantile, and seek to replace the lost “dual union” arising from their parents’ rejection, and later morph into a focus on subjects including vengeance or sado-masochism.
The Russian storybook character Dunno has been noted as an example of a child with Haltlose personality disorder.
The age at which parents or professionals exhibited concern about psychopathy ranged; rarely even at a preschool age. Haltlose children confusingly tend to appear very strong-willed and ambitious, it is only as they age and the lack of perseverance becomes manifest that caretakers become puzzled by their “naughtiness” as it contradicts what had earlier appeared. This arises principally due to their rigid demands for short-term wishes being mistakenly interpreted as having a fixed purpose and persistence. Some patients later shown to be Haltlose, had shown neuropathic traits in childhood such as bedwetting and stuttering. They were also more likely to run away from their home, begin drinking before the socially acceptable age, and were afraid of punishment. Although struggling to make friends in young childhood, they find it easier as they age.
Kraepelin contended the disorder was “based on a biological predisposition” but also affected by factors such as childrearing practises, social position and state of the parental home. His analysis showed that 49% of diagnosed Haltlose had obvious parental issues such as alcoholism or personality disorders. A 1944 study of children produced by incest by Dr. Alfred Aschenbrenner found a high rate of Haltlose personality disorder, which he suggested might be explained as inherited from overly suggestive mothers. It is possible, although difficult, to diagnose from the age of five and presents one of the stronger psychiatric difficulties if present at such young age. It may be possible to prevent social failure “through welfare measures” akin to early intervention. Italian courts stressed mimicry of positive role models as a means to combat Haltlose youth who had fallen afoul of the law.
Schooling
Haltlose can cause educational difficulties, and if parents do not understand the peculiarities of their haltlose child, they may try to through good intentions to force the child into an educational regimen inappropriate for them, which then creates a feeling of isolation in the child which grows into a rebellious tendencies, “which turns out to be disastrous for further development”. Students with Haltlose personalities may prefer the arts over the sciences, since the former does not require a consistent sense of truth and entails less disciplined study. Given their inability to anchor a self-schema and tendency to play-act roles, the theatre and film have great attraction and influence over them.
With proper leadership and controls from teachers, they are able to become “model pupils” in terms of behaviour, although Schneider opined that it was worthless to educate an inability to learn from mistakes prevented actual education, and bemoaned that the late onset of anti-social behaviours kept the Haltlose in school when they might otherwise be removed. Walter Moos believed that Haltlose personality disorder and hyperthymia had shown itself to be contagious in rare cases, wherein classmates developed the same disorder from interaction with patients. Homburger argued for removing a Haltlose child from their family of origin as soon as the disorder was confirmed, to resettle in a rural educational centre.
Adolescence, Young Adulthood and Efforts to Intervene
When required to live independently, they “soon lose interest, become distracted and absent-minded, and commit gross errors and negligence”. Ruth von der Leyen noted that “every care provider, teacher and doctor knows the Haltlose Psychopath from their practice”, and remarked that caring for such a patient was made more difficult because of the need to lecture and intervene to enlist the psychopath’s cooperation in short-term improvements, despite being aware the psychiatric reports have determined such efforts are ultimately useless but should be practised regardless.
The tendency to accumulate debts while seeking pleasure or escaping responsibility is often the attributed cause for their descent into crime, although Kramer noted those who displayed “extreme dexterity, sufficient talent for imagination, and a tendency towards dishonesty” were able to find alternative sources of income without necessarily becoming criminal, although warned that “again and again, their debts have to be paid until the parents no longer can, or want to, do this and leave them to their selves”.
Gannushkin noted “Such people involuntarily evoke sympathy and a desire to help them, but the assistance rendered to them rarely lasts, so it is worth abandoning such people for a short while”. The wasted good intentions resulted in the summary:
“probably the most important function of the psychiatrist when dealing with these patients is to protect their relatives and friends from ruining themselves in hopeless attempts at reclamation. With most of these patients a time comes when the relatives will be best advised…to allow the patient to go to prison, or otherwise suffer unsheltered the consequences of his deeds.”
By contrast, others have advanced the “rather optimistic” belief that “a suitable [spouse]” or similar “strong-willed” relative could drastically improve the outcome of Haltlosen patients. This was echoed by Andrey Yevgenyevich Lichko who, while preferring the term “accentuation of character” to describe the psychopathy rather than “personality disorder”, noted “if they fall into the hands of a person with a strong will, for example a wife or husband, they can they live quite happily…but the guardianship must be permanent.”
Criminology
While some Haltlose have risen to the level of dangerous offenders multiple times over, it is more frequent that they attract attention early from their “vagabond” nature.
Heinrich Schulte, a wartime medical judge and consulting psychiatrist for the military, continued advocating for the sterilization of Haltlose and other “Schwachsinnigen” after the war’s end. In 1979, the Neue Anthropologie publication referred to a need to sterilize those like alcoholics, “who are often Haltlose psychopaths”, from bearing children, to reduce crime.
Although Kraepelin believed those with Haltlose personality disorder represented the antithesis of morality, there is not necessarily a tendency towards deliberate amorality among the demographic despite its frequent criminal violations since they may lack the ability to premeditate. But their demonstrated lack of self-control is “especially manifested in the sphere of morality”.
In 1935, it was estimated that 58% of recidivist criminals were diagnosed with Haltlose personality disorder, higher than any other personality disorder. More recently, Haltlose and Histrionic were the most common personality disorders found in female juvenile delinquents by forensic psychologists in Russia in the year 2000.
Domestic Violence, Incest and Molestation of Children
“[Patients resembling Haltlose] as a rule show little insight into the peculiarities of their conduct. They do not understand how they could have done these things, or they blame their relatives, neighbors and so forth”. Dr. Herman Morris Adler, 1917.
Although they enter relationships easily, Andrey Yevgenyevich Lichko contends they are not capable of actual loyalty or selfless love, and sex is treated as a form of entertainment rather than intimacy. They are therefore described as acting as “family tyrants”.
Although they may not qualify as “true” pedophiles, Haltlose personalities demonstrate an increased risk of sexually molesting children, since other potential victims would require the realisation of greater planning, but children are suggestible and easily overwhelmed.
A 1967 German study had suggested over 90% of adult-child incest offenders were diagnosed with Haltlose Personality Disorder. Female patients may also live vicariously through encouraging and directing the sexual lives of their daughters.
Drunk Driving, Hit-and-Run
Some Haltlose personalities are drawn towards dangerous driving habits “as a source of almost hedonist pleasure”. In 1949 the Automobil Revue proposed that additional tests should be necessary for Haltlose personalities to obtain a driver’s license. They have been known to steal cars to joyride at high speeds if they are not otherwise able to find satisfy their urge.
The American Journal of Psychiatry published a study of hit and run drivers in 1941, which showed 40% of drivers who fled the scene of a traffic accident tested positive for haltlose personality disorder. This was consistent with the earlier finding that Haltlose Personalities were among the most likely to attempt to flee if caught in commission of any crime.
Suicidality and Murder-Suicide
Research in the early twentieth century on suicidality among the Haltlose indicated several things: they chafe at the notion of any religion as it introduces unwanted inhibitions, especially against parasuicidal demonstrations; women Haltlose most frequently indicated suicidality was based upon fear of punishment or reproach, as well as the “excitement” of being institutionalised; and although frequently planning or attempting suicide, including through suicide pacts or murder suicide, Haltlose typically do not succeed since they lacked courage and were easily distracted.
Institutionalisation
Haltlose patients respond very well to institutionalization where their influences can be controlled, becoming “model inmates” of sanitariums even within hours of first arriving despite a chaotic life outside of the regimen, “but if you leave them, through good intentions, to their own devices – they don’t last long before collapsing their current state and being seduced back onto the wrong track”. Schneider recommended warning them “through punishing them” as it was the only control on their action. Bleuler said the court system needed to understand such persons were in “urgent need of inhibitions”.
Pyotr Gannushkin noted they joined military service due to peer pressure but given the lack of alcohol and stern, hard work required of them were able to function without their normal impairment. A 1942 study of the Wehrmacht found that only Haltlose and Schizoid were not measurable among soldiers despite their presence in the civilian population. A 1976 Soviet naval study came to similar conclusions.
Roth and Slater concluded “the treatment of such a personality is almost hopeless under the present ordering of society. Any treatment would…present difficulties…beyond the powers of these patients. The prospects of psychotherapy are forlorn and the best that can be obtained will be reached through social control.”
Some researchers suggest their moods and insufficient motivation will lead them to “vague feelings of fear and calamity…turning every little thing into big things, excitement, misinterpreting every harmless word, criticizing everything and commiting hostile acts”, and in some cases they look back with hindsight and regret the injustices they did. However Kramer held that when caught in wrongdoing, “we find them contrite, self-accusing and assuring that they will improve – but on closer inspection it is feigned and not sincere”.
Upon being confronted with their misdeeds, the Haltlose respond “with more or less superficial reasons to excuse them, they claim that their parents treated them incorrectly, that they were the victim of adverse circumstances, seduced by other people and misled. Other Haltlose, especially those with a strong intellect, make up a theoretical schema that would justify their actions.”
Examples
Kielholz, Arthur, Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse XIX 1933 Heft 4, “Weh’dem der lugt! Beitrag zum problem der pseudologia phantastica”, an article on pathological lying in the Haltlose patients Max Specke, a Swiss charlatan with a penchant for melodramatic flair and Emil Schuldling, a habitual criminal with childhood sexual perversions
Story of Robert Wenger, who was diagnosed Haltlose and spent 54 years between institutions and prison for minor crimes until the documentary series Quer exposed his case, leading to an apology from politician Samuel Bhend in 1999.
Karl Hager, a habitual criminal diagnosed Haltlose who was frequently jailed for homosexual acts and was ultimately killed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp (in German)
Berlit, Berthold (December 1931). “Erblichkeitsuntersuchungen bei Psychopathen”. Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie. 134(1), pp.382-498.
Article referencing Hermann Lederman, discharged from the Wehrmacht in 1940 having been diagnosed with Haltlose personality disorder and sent to Wehrmachtgefängnis Torgau
Hysteroid dysphoria is a name given to repeated episodes of depressed mood in response to feeling rejected. It bears similarities to Haltlose personality disorder from which it must be distinguished.
Hysteroid dysphoria has been described in outpatient populations and is thought to be a subtype of atypical depression involving rejection sensitivity (see below) and therapeutic response to monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).
While some research shows that hysteroid dysphoria responds well to MAOIs, other research has suggested that the difference actually comes from the condition being less sensitive to tricyclic antidepressants.
Other studies have examined the symptoms associated with hysteroid dysphoria and found that while the symptoms are observable, they are not unique or distinct enough to be considered their own condition.
Rejection Sensitivity
Karen Horney was the first theorist to discuss the phenomenon of rejection sensitivity. She suggested that it is a component of the neurotic personality, and that it is a tendency to feel deep anxiety and humiliation at the slightest rebuff. Simply being made to wait, for example, could be viewed as a rejection and met with extreme anger and hostility.
Global mental health is the international perspective on different aspects of mental health. It is ‘the area of study, research and practice that places a priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide’. There is a growing body of criticism of the global mental health movement, and has been widely criticised as a neo-colonial or “missionary” project and as primarily a front for pharmaceutical companies seeking new clients for psychiatric drugs.
In theory, taking into account cultural differences and country-specific conditions, it deals with the epidemiology of mental disorders in different countries, their treatment options, mental health education, political and financial aspects, the structure of mental health care systems, human resources in mental health, and human rights issues among others.
The overall aim of the field of global mental health is to strengthen mental health all over the world by providing information about the mental health situation in all countries, and identifying mental health care needs in order to develop cost-effective interventions to meet those specific needs.
The Global Burden of Disease
Mental, neurological, and substance use disorders make a substantial contribution to the global burden of disease (GBD). This is a global measure of so-called disability-adjusted life years (DALY’s) assigned to a certain disease/disorder, which is a sum of the years lived with disability and years of life lost due to this disease within the total population. Neuropsychiatric conditions account for 14% of the global burden of disease. Among non-communicable diseases, they account for 28% of the DALY’s – more than cardiovascular disease or cancer. However, it is estimated that the real contribution of mental disorders to the global burden of disease is even higher, due to the complex interactions and co-morbidity of physical and mental illness.
Around the world, almost one million people die due to suicide every year, and it is the third leading cause of death among young people. The most important causes of disability due to health-related conditions worldwide include unipolar depression, alcoholism, schizophrenia, bipolar depression and dementia. In low- and middle-income countries, these conditions represent a total of 19.1% of all disability related to health conditions.
Mental Health by Country
The following is an outline from selected countries.
Africa
Mental illnesses and mental health disorders are widespread concerns among underdeveloped African countries, yet these issues are largely neglected, as mental health care in Africa is given statistically less attention than it is in other, westernised nations. Rising death tolls due to mental illness demonstrate the imperative need for improved mental health care policies and advances in treatment for Africans suffering from psychological disorders.
Underdeveloped African countries are so visibly troubled by physical illnesses, disease, malnutrition, and contamination that the dilemma of lacking mental health care has not been prioritised, makes it challenging to have a recognised impact on the African population. In 1988 and 1990, two original resolutions were implemented by the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Member States in Africa. AFR/RC39/R1 and AFR/RC40/R9 attempted to improve the status of mental health care in specific African regions to combat its growing effects on the African people. However, it was found that these new policies had little impact on the status of mental health in Africa, ultimately resulting in an incline in psychological disorders instead of the desired decline, and causing this to seem like an impossible problem to manage.
In Africa, many socio-cultural and biological factors have led to heightened psychological struggles, while also masking their immediate level of importance to the African eye. Increasing rates of unemployment, violence, crime, rape, and disease are often linked to substance abuse, which can cause mental illness rates to inflate. Additionally, physical disease like HIV/AIDS, the Ebola epidemic, and malaria often have lasting psychological effects on victims that go unrecognised in African communities because of their inherent cultural beliefs. Traditional African beliefs have led to the perception of mental illness as being caused by supernatural forces, preventing helpful or rational responses to abnormal behaviour. For example, Ebola received loads of media attention when it became rampant in Africa and eventually spread to the US, however, researchers never really paid attention to its psychological effects on the African brain. Extreme anxiety, struggles with grief, feelings of rejection and incompetence, depression leading to suicide, PTSD, and much more are only some of the noted effects of diseases like Ebola. These epidemics come and go, but their lasting effects on mental health are remaining for years to come, and even ending lives because of the lack of action. There has been some effort to financially fund psychiatric support in countries like Liberia, due to its dramatic mental health crisis after warfare, but not much was benefited. Aside from financial reasons, it is so difficult to enforce mental health interventions and manage mental health in general in underdeveloped countries simply because the individuals living there do not necessarily believe in western psychiatry. It is also important to note that the socio-cultural model of psychology and abnormal behaviour is dependent on factors surrounding cultural differences. This causes mental health abnormalities to remain more hidden due to the culture’s natural behaviour, compared to westernised behaviour and cultural norms.
This relationship between mental and physical illness is an ongoing cycle that has yet to be broken. While many organisations are attempting to solve problems about physical health in Africa, as these problems are clearly visible and recognisable, there is little action taken to confront the underlying mental effects that are left on the victims. It is recognised that many of the mentally ill in Africa search for help from spiritual or religious leaders, however this is widely because many African countries are significantly lacking in mental health professionals in comparison to the rest of the world. In Ethiopia alone, there are “only 10 psychiatrists for the population of 61 million people,” studies have shown. While numbers have definitely changed since this research was done, the lack of psychological professionals throughout African continues with a current average of 1.4 mental health workers per 100,000 people compared to the global statistic of 9.0 professionals per 100,00 people. Additionally, statistics show that the “global annual rate of visits to mental health outpatient facilities is 1,051 per 100,000 population,” while “in Africa the rate is 14 per 100,000” visits. About half of Africa’s countries have some sort of mental health policy, however, these policies are highly disregarded, as Africa’s government spends “less than 1% of the total health budget on mental health”. Specifically in Sierra Leone, about 98.8% of people suffering from mental disorders remain untreated, even after the building of a well below average psychiatric hospital, further demonstrating the need for intervention.
Not only has there been little hands-on action taken to combat mental health issues in Africa, but there has also been little research done on the topic to spread its awareness and prevent deaths. The Lancet Global Health acknowledges that there are well over 1,000 published articles covering physical health in Africa, but there are still less than 50 discussing mental health. And this pressing dilemma of prioritising physical health vs. mental health is only worsening as the continent’s population is substantially growing with research showing that “Between 2000 and 2015 the continent’s population grew by 49%, yet the number of years lost to disability as a result of mental and substance use disorders increased by 52%”. The number of deaths caused by mental instability is truly competing with those caused by physical diseases: “In 2015, 17.9 million years were lost to disability as a consequence of mental health problems. Such disorders were almost as important a cause of years lost to disability as were infectious and parasitic diseases, which accounted for 18.5 million years lost to disability,”. Mental health and physical health care, while they may seem separate, are very much connected, as these two factors determine life or death for humans. As new challenges surface and old challenges still haven’t been prioritised, Africa’s mental health care policies need significant improvement in order to provide its people with the appropriate health care they deserve, hopefully preventing this problem from expanding.
Australia
A survey conducted by Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2008 regarding adults with manageable to severe neurosis reveals almost half of the population had a mental disorder at some point of their life and one in five people had a sustained disorder in the preceding 12 months. In neurotic disorders, 14% of the population experienced anxiety and comorbidity disorders were next to common mental disorder with vulnerability to substance abuse and relapses. There were distinct gender differences in disposition to mental health illness. Women were found to have high rate of mental health disorders, and Men had higher propensity of risk for substance abuse. The SMHWB survey showed families that had low socioeconomic status and high dysfunctional patterns had a greater proportional risk for mental health disorders. A 2010 survey regarding adults with psychosis revealed 5 persons per 1,000 in the population seeks professional mental health services for psychotic disorders and the most common psychotic disorder was schizophrenia.
Bangladesh
Mental health disorder is considered a major public health concern and it constitutes about 13% of the Global Burden of disease and severe mental health disease may reduce each individual’s life expectancy by about 20%. Low and middle-income countries have a higher burden of mental health disorder as it is not considered as a health problem as other chronic diseases. Being a low-income country, in Bangladesh, mental health issues are highly stigmatised.
A community-based study in the rural area of Bangladesh in 2000-2001 estimated that the burden of mental morbidity was 16.5% among rural people and most were suffering from mainly depression and anxiety and which was one-half and one-third of total cases respectively. Furthermore, the prevalence of mental disorders was higher in women in large families aged 45 years.
Care for mental health in Bangladesh
A study conducted in 2008 stated that only 16% of patients came directly to the Mental Health Practitioner with a mean delay of 10.5 months of the onset of mental illness, which made them more vulnerable in many ways. 22% of patients went for the religious or traditional healer and 12% consulted a rural medical practitioner with the least delay of 2-2.5 weeks.
Canada
According to statistics released by the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health one in five people in Canada experience a mental health or addiction problem. Young people of ages 15 to 25 are particularly found to be vulnerable. Major depression is found to affect 8% and anxiety disorder 12% of the population. Women are 1.5 times more likely to suffer from mood and anxiety disorders. WHO points out that there are distinct gender differences in patterns of mental health and illness. The lack of power and control over their socioeconomic status, gender based violence; low social position and responsibility for the care of others render women vulnerable to mental health risks. Since more women than men seek help regarding a mental health problem, this has led to not only gender stereotyping but also reinforcing social stigma. WHO has found that this stereotyping has led doctors to diagnose depression more often in women than in men even when they display identical symptoms. Often communication between health care providers and women is authoritarian leading to either the under-treatment or over-treatment of these women.
Women’s College Hospital has a program called the “Women’s Mental Health Program” where doctors and nurses help treat and educate women regarding mental health collaboratively, individually, and online by answering questions from the public.
Another Canadian organisation serving mental health needs is the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). CAMH is one of Canada’s largest and most well-known health and addiction facilities, and it has received international recognitions from the Pan American Health Organisation and WHO Collaborating Centre. They do research in areas of addiction and mental health in both men and women. In order to help both men and women, CAMH provides “clinical care, research, education, policy development and health promotion to help transform the lives of people affected by mental health and addiction issues.” CAMH is different from Women’s College Hospital due to its widely known rehab centre for women who have minor addiction issues, to severe ones. This organization provides care for mental health issues by assessments, interventions, residential programs, treatments, and doctor and family support.
Israel
In Israel, a Mental Health Insurance Reform took effect in July 2015, transferring responsibility for the provision of mental health services from the Ministry of Health to the four national health plans. Physical and mental health care were united under one roof; previously they had functioned separately in terms of finance, location, and provider. Under the reform, the health plans developed new services or expanded existing ones to address mental health problems.
United States
According to the WHO in 2004, depression is the leading cause of disability in the United States for individuals ages 15 to 44. Absence from work in the US due to depression is estimated to be in excess of $31 billion per year. Depression frequently co-occurs with a variety of medical illnesses such as heart disease, cancer, and chronic pain and is associated with poorer health status and prognosis. Each year, roughly 30,000 Americans take their lives, while hundreds of thousands make suicide attempts. In 2004, suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in the United States, third among individuals ages 15-24. Despite the increasingly availability of effectual depression treatment, the level of unmet need for treatment remains high. By way of comparison, a study conducted in Australia during 2006 to 2007 reported that one-third (34.9%) of patients diagnosed with a mental health disorder had presented to medical health services for treatment. The US has a shortage of mental healthcare workers, contributing to the unmet need for treatment. By 2025, the US will need an additional 15,400 psychiatrists and 57,490 psychologists to meet the demand for treatment.
Treatment Gap
It is estimated that one in four people in the world will be affected by mental or neurological disorders at some point in their lives. Although many effective interventions for the treatment of mental disorders are known, and awareness of the need for treatment of people with mental disorders has risen, the proportion of those who need mental health care but who do not receive it remains very high. This so-called “treatment gap” is estimated to reach between 76-85% for low- and middle-income countries, and 35-50% for high-income countries.
Despite the acknowledged need, for the most part there have not been substantial changes in mental health care delivery during the past years. Main reasons for this problem are public health priorities, lack of a mental health policy and legislation in many countries, a lack of resources – financial and human resources – as well as inefficient resource allocation.
In 2011, the WHO estimated a shortage of 1.18 million mental health professionals, including 55,000 psychiatrists, 628,000 nurses in mental health settings, and 493,000 psychosocial care providers needed to treat mental disorders in 144 low- and middle-income countries. The annual wage bill to remove this health workforce shortage was estimated at about US$4.4 billion.
Interventions
Information and evidence about cost-effective interventions to provide better mental health care are available. Although most of the research (80%) has been carried out in high-income countries, there is also strong evidence from low- and middle-income countries that pharmacological and psychosocial interventions are effective ways to treat mental disorders, with the strongest evidence for depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and hazardous alcohol use.
Recommendations to strengthen mental health systems around the world have been first mentioned in the WHO’s World Health Report 2001, which focused on mental health:
Provide treatment in primary care.
Make psychotropic drugs available.
Give care in the community.
Educate the public.
Involve communities, families and consumers.
Establish national policies, programs and legislation.
Develop human resources.
Link with other sectors.
Monitor community mental health.
Support more research.
Based on the data of 12 countries, assessed by the WHO Assessment Instrument for Mental Health Systems (WHO-AIMS), the costs of scaling up mental health services by providing a core treatment package for schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder, depressive episodes and hazardous alcohol use have been estimated. Structural changes in mental health systems according to the WHO recommendations have been taken into account.
For most countries, this model suggests an initial period of investment of US$0.30 – 0.50 per person per year. The total expenditure on mental health would have to rise at least ten-fold in low-income countries. In those countries, additional financial resources will be needed, while in middle- and high-income countries the main challenge will be the reallocation of resources within the health system to provide better mental health service.
Prevention
Prevention is beginning to appear in mental health strategies, including the 2004 WHO report “Prevention of Mental Disorders”, the 2008 EU “Pact for Mental Health” and the 2011 US National Prevention Strategy. NIMH or the National Institute of Mental Health has over 400 grants.
Stakeholders
World Health Organisation (WHO)
Two of WHO’s core programmes for mental health are WHO MIND (Mental health improvements for Nations Development) and Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP).
WHO MIND focuses on 5 areas of action to ensure concrete changes in people’s daily lives. These are:
Action in and support to countries to improve mental health, such as the WHO Pacific Island Mental Health network (PIMHnet).
Mental health policy, planning and service development.
Mental health human rights and legislation.
Mental health as a core part of human development.
The QualityRights Project which works to unite and empower people to improve the quality of care and promote human rights in mental health facilities and social care homes.
Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) is WHO’s action plan to scale up services for mental, neurological and substance use disorders for countries especially with low and lower middle incomes. The aim of mhGAP is to build partnerships for collective action and to reinforce the commitment of governments, international organisations and other stakeholders.
The mhGAP Intervention Guide (mhGAP-IG) was launched in October 2010. It is a technical tool for the management of mental, neurological and substance use disorders in non-specialist health settings. The priority conditions included are: depression, psychosis, bipolar disorders, epilepsy, developmental and behavioural disorders in children and adolescents, dementia, alcohol use disorders, drug use disorders, self-harm/suicide and other significant emotional or medically unexplained complaints.
This book charts the creeping of psychology and psychiatry across the borders of everyday experience and across geographical borders, as a form of colonialism that comes from within and from outside, swallowed in the form of a pill. It maps an anxious space where socio-economic crises come to be reconfigured as individual crisis – as ‘mental illness’; and how potentially violent interventions come to be seen as ‘essential’ treatment.
Another prominent critic is Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us: The Globalisation of the American Psyche. A more constructive approach is offered by Vincenzo Di Nicola whose article on the Global South as an emergent epistemology creates a bridge between critiques of globalisation and the initial gaps and limitations of the Global Mental Health movement.
Mental Health Matters 
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