ANARCHIST QUESTION AND ANSWER Q: How would an anarchist society deal with people with psychiatric illnesses? A: One in four people will develop a psychiatric disorder within their lifetime. One in ten of the 25% of the population who develop a psychiatric illness will develop an illness that puts them or the community at a serious risk. Anarchism as a political and social philosophy has a poor track record of dealing with people with major psychiatric problems. Many anarchists believe that psychiatric illness is a direct result of a situational crisis and in an anarchist community, psychiatric illness will not be a problem. Even if we accept this false assumption, it would take generations for psychiatric illness to "wither" away. Unfortunately, although some psychiatric illness is related to life experiences and the situation people find themselves in, some like physical illness, is due to biological problems. No attempt of love, understanding or support will solve the problem. What does an anarchist community do when somebody9s psychiatric problems, leads them to cause harm to themselves or other people? Does the community let them do whatever they want? Does it expel them? Creating a caste of outlaws in the process or are people9s freedoms restricted to protect them and the community? At the end of the day, the problems that an anarchist community faces concerning psychiatric disturbances, is the same that any other community faces. The difference hopefully is the way that anarchists deal with the problem. All too often, it9s much too difficult and anarchists ignore the problem hoping that it will go away. So we9re back to square one. What would we do? One possible way of tackling the problem is appointing or electing a panel with both lay people and professionals on it, to look at cases that are referred to it. Obviously in a time of crisis, the individual concerned would be restrained and kept under observation in their own home or a secure facility until assessed by the panel. They would be offered treatment if there was any significant delay in assessing their case. If they refused treatment they would be kept in a secure situation until assessed. Bizarre behaviour, voluntary euthanasia, personality problems and any other behaviour that does not pose a major threat to the individual concerned or somebody else in the community, would not lead to that individual being detained for assessment. The panel would attempt to encourage the individual concerned to undergo voluntary treatment, if they refused, forcible treatment would have to be considered. Doing nothing would put both the individual and community at risk, creating a climate of fear, loathing and vigilante justice. It9s best to temporarily restrain somebody and offer them or force them to have treatment, than waiting for them to kill themselves, kill other members of the community they live in or seeing them being killed by people who are defending themselves against unprovoked attacks.
