Forcible medication... Obviously I am unable to consent to being forcibly medicated at the time, however I could conceivably consent in advance. If I think about circumstances, and assume generously that people will be doing their best to act in my best interests - and that their best is a good best:
1) If I start acting seriously out of character, due to a new organic cause, for example a brain tumour. This, I think, is the prime case for forcible medication, as I wouldn't say my reactions are me. 2) If I start acting "seriously out of character", due to a psychological cause, for example a traumatic incident. Arguably my reactions are still very much me. That said, it could be argued the other way. 3) If there is some ongoing oddness due to an ongoing cause that has been around for a long time, where some magic threshold has been crossed. This cause is a part of me, so it would be hard to justify forcible medication. OTOH if I have been aware of this in advance, and I've previously said, "I'm in a degenerating state, if I degenerate too far, medicate me", then fair enough. 4) Diathesis-stress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model) - some ongoing neurological oddity, which previously had been sitting there quietly, is brought to the fore by a traumatic incident. I have previously not known about this, and have not had the opportunity to build character traits to deal with this. It really isn't clear whether the lurking oddness is me - hence the worries in point 2.
When I look at this... I can see this translating into lysystratae's case-by-case thing, with very careful regulation from the outside, looking at feedback from people who have (or haven't) previously been forcibly medicated, erring on the side of not medicating. But I still twitch. The thought of intervening on behalf of someone's True Self, knowable from the outside but not from the inside, is so abusable...
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Date: 2012-11-02 04:16 pm (UTC)1) If I start acting seriously out of character, due to a new organic cause, for example a brain tumour. This, I think, is the prime case for forcible medication, as I wouldn't say my reactions are me.
2) If I start acting "seriously out of character", due to a psychological cause, for example a traumatic incident. Arguably my reactions are still very much me. That said, it could be argued the other way.
3) If there is some ongoing oddness due to an ongoing cause that has been around for a long time, where some magic threshold has been crossed. This cause is a part of me, so it would be hard to justify forcible medication. OTOH if I have been aware of this in advance, and I've previously said, "I'm in a degenerating state, if I degenerate too far, medicate me", then fair enough.
4) Diathesis-stress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diathesis%E2%80%93stress_model) - some ongoing neurological oddity, which previously had been sitting there quietly, is brought to the fore by a traumatic incident. I have previously not known about this, and have not had the opportunity to build character traits to deal with this. It really isn't clear whether the lurking oddness is me - hence the worries in point 2.
When I look at this... I can see this translating into