> On Mar 24, 2004, at 8:33 AM, Wei Dai wrote > > > > The paper makes the point that what psychology views as mental > > diseases in many cases can be interpreted simply as extreme or > > unusual preferences, and in those cases involuntary psychiatric > > treatment can not be justified as a benefit for the patient.
Stephen Miller: > It seems to me that a clear exception may be where there's an extreme > preference to harm others. Depends on where you put the emphasis in Wei's last sentence. This might be an exception to the "can not be justified" part, but not an exception to the "as a benefit for the patient" part. In other words, in the case of a preference to harm others, involuntary treatment might be justified as a benefit to others even if it is not a benefit (i.e., is a cost) to the patient. One thing I think is missing from all this is a discussion of how these extreme preference -- or indeed, any preferences -- arise. Normally in economics we tend to take preferences as given and view the formation of preferences as outside the scope of economics. But we also normally assume preferences to be stable, when clearly they can change. Why is this relevant? Well, many "psychiatric illnesses" appear in previously "normal" people. If we are going to interpret "psychiatric illnesses" as "extreme or unusual preferences" then the onset of the "illness" has to be interpreted as a "change in preferences." So we are necessarily dropping the usual assumption of stable preferences, and it's worth thinking about why these preferences change radically and suddenly. Likewise, for some of these "illnesses" there are "treatments" -- in other words, drugs or something that "change preferences" back to "normal," or at least appear to move them back to normal range. Again, it is worth thinking about why these preferences change. --Robert
