NationStates Jolt Archive

I would just like to get a little more exposure of my proposal. I do not believe that such a resolution has ever been passed by the UN.

Description:

Resolved, all countries that are members of UN be required to treat citizens who are mentally-ill humanely.

A mental illness is defined as a psychiatric disorder that results in a disruption in a person's thinking, feeling, moods, and ability to relate to others.

This proposal would include a ban on physical abuse, forcing mentally-ill citizens to perform inhumane tasks, or forcing mentally-ill citizens to live and/or work in inhumane conditions.

Basic services should be offered to all citizens who are mentally-ill.

-Are the terms satisfactory?

Catholic Europe supports this proposal. Many people who are mentally-ill receive the wrong treatment or aree shunned and outcast from society living in recluses away from anywhere, and serving on the bare minimum. We must act to stop that and this proposal at least gets the ball rolling for this to occur.

I very much agree with Catholic Europe.

Please add your name to the support my proposal. Thanks everyone!

I agree strongly with this proposal. As Catholic Europe said the mentally-ill are treated as social outcasts by generally the majority of people. They are just like you or me, to me there is no difference. Anyone who treats the mentally-ill in the stated ways should be locked up for a good few years or even longer to help them realise. Lets hope in the future those who do see the mentally-ill as social outcasts become the social outcasts themselves. I will add my approval very soon.

We have two issues with the proposal as worded, and wonder if you would consider altering them.
The first is 'mental illness is defined as a psychiatric disorder...' we cannot help thinking you're saying the same thing twice - psychiatric disorder is merely another term for mental illness, and generally mental illness is the preferred term as it implies that the difficulties the person is having are related to an 'illness' rather than a lack of moral fibre or any other descriptions historically used.
Also mental illness is a pretty broad term that is frequently abused by governments who seek to use psychiatrists as agents of social control. It can be taken at its most extreme to encompass everything from alcoholism to personality disorder. It is with the latter that there is generally the greatest difficulties, after all how does one assess what is disorder and what is merely an extension of normal? Also as personality disorder encompasses things like psychopathy (or antisocial personality disorder, we don't know what they call it in the US) is it the place of psychiatry at all to treat them? After all if you persistently commit violent crimes because of underlying personality traits do you need a psychiatrist or do you need a prison?
We realise the last paragraph may open up issues that are quite pernickety and involved from the field of mental health, but basically as the resolution is worded we would have a concern that the definition of mental illness as given may be too broad and force governments to treat social problems as medical illnesses.
Perhaps turning the wording around and phrasing it along the lines of 'all members of the UN be required to promote mental health in the same way as physical health'.
This kind of ties in to my last point about 'basic services'. It just goes against the grain a bit, you have a lovely resolution proposing equality etc. and then only offer 'basic services', again why not propose that people suffering mental illness are entitled to the same level of health care and compassionate treatment as those without. (Believe us, this is important, frequently patients with mental illness will be discriminated against because they have a psychiatric diagnosis and be offered substandard care by otherwise compassionate healthcare professionals).
These are all just thoughts, ignore as you see fit.
Obviously we would love to support your resolution, but we in Drakosovar believe mental illness to be a weakness in your genetic code punishable by summary execution.
Drakos, Chief Executive for the Department of Equality and Hypocritical Double Standards, Drakosovar

I am in full support of this proposition. I believe that citizens regardless of mental status. I fully support your motion to treat the mentally ill equally.

This is stupied because there is no set definition to what mential ill means. In a way everybody is mentially ill. For example I could say I am mentally ill because I hate gays and stink at english. While others could say that they stink at math and that since they do not understand it, they are mentally ill. Plus mentally ill people are not better than me. Darwism, surival of the fitess. If they fail to be as good as normal people they should be shot as soon as the illness is found out about. They are a drain on the economy because they do not know how to work and live off of welfare. :?

I have to agree with Nuclearweapons

This is stupied because there is no set definition to what mential ill means. In a way everybody is mentially ill. For example I could say I am mentally ill because I hate gays and stink at english. While others could say that they stink at math and that since they do not understand it, they are mentally ill.

I agree that this should be better defined, perhaps ‘as proven by a council of leading psychiatrist from throughout the UN’ or other phrase should be used.

Plus mentally ill people are not better than me.
That depends on who you are talking to. Personally I think that people with mental illnesses only have brains that work differently then ‘normal’ people. This can both be an advantage and a disadvantage depending on the illness, person and situation.

Darwism, surival of the fitess. If they fail to be as good as normal people they should be shot as soon as the illness is found out about.
It is quite common that a mentally ill person is as good as a ‘normal person’ and through therapy be work through their problems. (We also find it funny as you just pointed out that you could be considered mentally ill, although we know you didn't mean it like that)

They are a drain on the economy because they do not know how to work and live off of welfare.
Some do it depends on the severity of the illness.

I would support this proposal if it was edited to include a better definition of ‘mental illness’.

Desdemona,
UN representative,
The Back New World

Spokeswoman: Letila supports this proposal.

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Kûk‡xenisi n!ok‡x'osi xno-k‡xek‡emi.-The state only exists to serve itself.
"Oppose excessive military spending, yet believe in excessive spending on junk food and plastic surgery to make all your women look like LARDASSES!"-Sino, when I criticized excessive military spending.
http://www.sulucas.com/images/steatopygia.jpg
I'm male. Note the pic of attractive women.

Tie the definitions into the DSM; that should be precise enough.

We like the general scope of the proposal; it leaves room for nations to decide their own course of action in fulfilling the mandates.

Emperor Jonathan Ivarian has suffered from a mental illness for the last ten years and greatly appreciates the intentions of this proposal. However, he agrees with Drakosovar on all of his points, and would support this proposal with a slight bit of rewording.

~~Emperor Jonathan Ivarian~~

As much as I'd like to support this proposal, and I agree in spirit, the term mental illness, as others have pointed out, is far too broad. Now, if you were to concretely define this, you'd have my support. Might I suggest you rewrite it to have a multi-national UN comittee of psychiactirc profesionals formed to define the term in an acceptable manner?

Yours,
Maestro Proteus
Progenitor and Caretaker of the Commonwealth of the Pure Existence

Our Senate wishes to propose that, if the last line were struck (regarding giving mental health people services), then we would gladly support this proposal. However, in its present form, we cannot.

Rome did not auction off its liberties in a day. First, politicians gave 'welfare' to the very poor. Then, to the not so poor. And soon, to anyone with a vote to sell. Caesar would be proud of us today.

Rome had welfare. :roll: A little evidence would be nice.

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Kûk‡xenisi n!ok‡x'osi xno-k‡xek‡emi.-The state only exists to serve itself.
"Oppose excessive military spending, yet believe in excessive spending on junk food and plastic surgery to make all your women look like LARDASSES!"-Sino, when I criticized excessive military spending.
http://www.sulucas.com/images/steatopygia.jpg
I'm male. Note the pic of attractive women.

Rome had welfare. :roll: A little evidence would be nice.

Never heard of Bread and Circuses? Rome practically invented the welfare state.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/39/B0463950.html

rome did have welfare, The Global Market is right, they didnt give away money, but it was welfare

And I suppose that is why it fell. :roll:

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Kûk‡xenisi n!ok‡x'osi xno-k‡xek‡emi.-The state only exists to serve itself.
"Oppose excessive military spending, yet believe in excessive spending on junk food and plastic surgery to make all your women look like LARDASSES!"-Sino, when I criticized excessive military spending.
http://www.sulucas.com/images/steatopygia.jpg
I'm male. Note the pic of attractive women.

And I suppose that is why it fell. :roll:

That was one of the key reasons in the fall of both the Republic and the Empire:

The Republic --
Eventually, the welfare system became so corrupt that any Senator could buy his way to the consulship. This caused a tremendous amount of problems and the plebians lost faith in the Republic altogether. Without this sort of quazi-bribery welfare-statism, Caesar would never have gained popular support and been able to stage his little military coup.

After Caesar came to office, he threw huge gladiator games and other triumphs so the poor could enjoy life more. And all at the cost of liberty.

The Empire--
Every Emperor had to provide plenty of welfare to stay in power. Eventually this wasn't just restircted to the poor, they gave handouts to middle-class and all but the richest eventually. This just made the Empire more decadant and more corrupt. By the time they were finally overrun by barbarians, Rome was a mere hollow shadow of its former self.

A final point to address Nuclear Weapons et al. Mentally ill people are normal. 1 in 5 of the population will suffer depression at some point in their lives, 1 in 100 schizophrenia and (our favourite statistic) 1 in 3 people who attend a general practitioner will have a personality disorder.
There is nothing particularly different about their brains over anyone elses. The vast majority of them recover (80% of people with depression have one episode and it never recurs, even with schizophrenia 17% will only have one episode and then get better) and go on to lead absolutely normal lives.
As to those who develop chronic illness - this is largely because the current treatments available for chronic mental illness are pretty rotten and don't work well. The reason we don't have effective treatments - stigmatism. Mental health is not perceived as important as babies with heart conditions, so funding is not available to allow us to carry out the same level of research as other 'sexier' conditions. (Although we acknowkledge that this is changing and in the UK mental health has become one of the NHS' top three priorities alongside cancer and heart disease).
As to these people being a drain on the economy, well chronic illness is expensive, that's the nature of the beast. We note that you wouldn't propose to put down babies with heart conditions (even though they will cost as much money).
Drakos, Chief Executioner for the Department of Compulsory Equality, Drakosovar

Hmm, is there a way I can edit my proposal before it goes to vote (if it gets enough support in the first stage) ?

However, although the term "mentally ill" may be vague, what I propose should go for all citizens. No one should be physically abused or forced to live and/or work in inhumane conditions.

I wanted, however, this proposal, to be directed toward the mentally-ill because sometimes they are overlooked and ignored in societies.

:: notes to self ::

Glad I'm not part of the UN because if this bill passed I'd have to kill half my euthanasia programs, not that I would.

I like your resolution and have approved it. I will vote for it if it reaches the floor.

The nation of Guntland will bring attention of this proposal to their regional delagate in hopes of bringing it to the floor. Guntland has a long standing history of human rights and hopes to further its commitment to the rights which our citizens hold so dear.