Involuntary Commitment Records in Missouri are No Longer Confidential
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon signed into law Senate Bill 426 on July 13 which expands the conditions under which confidential mental health care records can be released.
Mental health care facilities that hold patients who have been civilly committed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, can now disclose information about patient medications and other medical records “to individuals designated by the department of mental health as community mental health liaisons for the purpose of coordination of care and services.”
We expect that this means the government wants to follow these patients back into the community when they are released so that they can be monitored as continuing to take their prescribed psychiatric drugs.
As if commitment is not an abusive human rights violation in itself! Now the government wants to make sure the abuse continues for the rest of the person’s life.
“The fact that psychiatric imprisonment is called ‘civil commitment’ is, of course, simply part of the linguistic deception characteristic of the mental–health system. Since civil commitment results in the loss of liberty, and subjects the victim to health hazards at the hands of medical criminals whose ostensible healing function is legitimized by the state, it entails far greater deprivation of rights than does incarceration in prison, a penalty carefully circumscribed by constitutional guarantees and judicial safeguards.”
(Dr. Thomas Szasz, M.D., late Professor of Psychiatry Emeritus)
With health care eating up vast amounts of our national budget, the first spending cut to make is the cost of “treating” people who prefer not to be mentally treated. Involuntary commitment laws hike federal, state, county, city and private health care costs under the strange circumstance of a patient–recipient who cannot say no.
CCHR recommends that citizens execute a Living Will, or Letter of Protection from Psychiatric Incarceration and/or Treatment, which directs that psychiatric incarceration, hospitalization, treatment or procedures not be imposed on you.