Mixed feelings here.
While I personally have little faith in psychiatry or it’s purveyors, I suppose in some cases they help.
This will certainly change the way head shrinkers in France treat their patients. But what will society do when the shrink says, this guy need to be locked away, and what chance will a sane person have after that is said?
In America do we even have such facilities any more, and if this effects us here which is unlikely, will not these facilities grow?
So the patient didn't show up for an appointment, and the psychiatrist is held responsible? That sounds like the psychiatrist was scapegoated, to me.
I wonder if the French still confine the mentally ill in hospitals. If they do what we do--throw the mentally ill out on the streets, mostly to live like rats, and sometimes to commit violent crimes--then I really don't see the basis for punishing the psychiatrist. Her hands would be tied as far as removing a violent psychopath from society.
???
I picture Frances McDormand. "He's fleeing the interview!"
What? No call for gun control yet?/sarc
In some states if a patient suicides up to five days after discharge from a facility, the discharging psychiatrist is held liable and has what would be termed as a “clinical colonoscopy” of the case and the practitioner by the state, the oversight commitees, the beurcrats and peers.
It is horrific that a good deed like volunteer suicide hot lines from the late sixties and early seventies have morphed into a burecratic morass that makes people responsible for the deeds of others, even when due diligence is served.
I am not talking about Tarasoff here (where if a patient states he is going to hurt someone, that the potential victim must be warned) I am talking about the expectation of predicting what behavior will be in two days, three days... and so on.
Psychiatric patient have issues because they do not think clearly. They can be some of the most wonderful and winsome people around, but frankly, their judgment often is poor to non-existent.
If this idea comes to the USA you’ll have people being locked up for playing video games that depict violent scenes, for saying “violent words,” for having “too much” interest in guns.
The American psyche has always had a hard time understanding the meaning of “moderation.”