On Boxing Day the West Australian reported that a man fitting the description of an escaped patient from Graylands Hospital in Perth was detained at the hospital, given antipsychotic drugs and suffered an adverse reaction which landed him in the general hospital. Click here to see the report. The return of an escaped psychiatric patient or an adverse drug reaction do not usually make the news, except that this time the authorities got the wrong man. The state’s Minister of Mental Health exp...
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Western culture places a high value on freedom of the individual. We only justify the removal of freedoms when citizens transgress or are regarded as not fully human. Since the eighteenth century enlightenment, rationality has become the pinnacle of full humanity. People seen to lack rationality are easily denied full human status and full human freedoms; among them are slaves, women and mad people.  

There is a growing international movement to abolish special legislation allowing compulsory ...
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