I'm the Joan of Arc of video game shitposts

o.k. i could get used to this..

The United Nations recognises it as a form of torture.

It increases suicide risk by 191 times.

It increases the risk of dying from heart disease and stroke by 3.5 times (no shit on that one, forcing extremely high doses of heavy drugs on someone without even titrating it does that)

45% of patients in psych wards have experienced sexual violence during an admission.

The UN Humans Rights Council report which includes discussions of how stripping the rights of people to accept or decline care erodes their dignity and personhood. Section V: Recommendations subsection 2 explicitly advocates for an end to involuntary hospitalization. This report also cites lots of other relevant data and is worth reading.

“Danger to Self and Others” a study that showed that in “compliers” (ie: people who are edge cases and are committed by some physicians but would not have been by others) rates of suicide and violent crime within three months of involuntary hospitalization rose significantly.

A comparative study that assesses a lot of other studies’ conclusions about the harm of involuntary holds compared to voluntary holds. This one is dense but worth it to understand that this isn’t an issue of data collection, the harm is visible in the aggregate

2023 study that found 45% of patients report being sexually assaulted in the psych ward. This study also notes that the numbers could be more, due to patient fears of reporting.

Here’s an article I personally find fascinating on the odd legality of psych holds in the US (do the cops have the right to seize your stuff if they think you’re a danger? Why the fuck are cops being allowed to make these assessments? How the fuck is this legal? Should it be legal?)

Having a loved one going through a mental health crisis is a horrible feeling. And it can feel right to try to send them to a “professional” or call in a wellness check when you can’t handle it or can’t get to them physically. But it really can’t be overstated: involuntary psych holds are proven to harm those who are struggling far more than they are proven to help.

Let’s all remember that the man , and others like him wake up every day and decide they’re going to harm your friends , your family , innocents who have no way to defend themselves against the power they all wield . And they gladly do so to get a little more powerful than the day before

They don’t get to expect humanity when they’ve spent their miserable lives depriving us of our own

Something like Breaking Bad, for example, has low squiggability (that’s what I’m calling this quality). It’s tightly written, the characters are consistent, there’s little left to interpolate or extrapolate. Obviously, people DO write fanfic of Breaking Bad, but it still has a low squiggability score. Whereas something like Supernatural has a high squiggability score. Fantasy and science fiction often have high squiggability scores. This suggests squiggability could also be related to worldbuilding and potential for people to borrow a premise or setting.