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Individual Writingassignment PhiA 2.4 The Moral Compass Of Contemporary Health
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PHIAINDIVIDUAL WRITING
ASSIGNMENT
Care or control for ‘persons with confused behaviour’
Maastricht University
PhiA February 2020
, Stage 1
The amount of incidents in The Netherlands with “persons with confused behaviour” has
doubled over the past 8 years (NRC, 2019). According to a Dutch national study, the police
estimate that on average they spend 13% of their entire working hours on activities related to
confused persons (Harte, J. M., 2015). They are now the object of many mental health studies
and recommendations regarding these people are made. Even though mental health
professionals and organisations have responsibility in this story, it is quite a challenge to
‘divide’ “confused” people into the ‘right’ group. Karlijn Roex is a sociologist, who
experienced this challenge herself when she had a panic attack after locking herself out of her
house (Roex, 2019). She was locked up by the police because of this panic attack, which
sounds strange if you’d ask me.
A very recent example of the incidents involving “confused” people, was the “Cinema-
Murder” in Groningen, the Netherlands. This murder was commited by a man whose family
had already reported him “confused” a couple times (RTV Noord, 2019). Another example is
the case of Thijs H., primary suspect in the homicide cases in The Hague and in the
Brunssummerheide. His neighbour had noticed his strange and confused behaviour but he
simply thought H. was drunk, so he didn’t report him.
It is quite common that “confused” people are involved in these incidents. Most of the time
the family has already reported them as “confused”. Because of the fact that it is hard to
distinguish between whether the confusion is ‘severe/dangerous’ or ‘mild’, the reports are too
often put aside. There have been several definitions of ‘confused behavior’. People who are in
danger of losing control of their lives, so that there is a risk that they will harm themselves or
others (van de Beek, M., 2016). This is a broad definition applied by the Aanjaagteam
Verwarde Personen, which was installed in 2015 by the Ministries of Health, Welfare and
Sports and the VNG.
Reading about these things in the news, frightens me. It makes me feel unsafe in my own
environment and I can get people who might want those people to get treatment, even if it has
to be forced. If I think about forced healthcare, I see patients tied to their beds, forcing them to
take medications. That doesn’t have to be the case, as we have seen when studying forced
treatment in mental healthcare last period. In the Netherlands, as well as in other countries in
the EU, there is a law regulating compulsory admission of mentally ill people (Tannsjo, T.,
2002). The Mayor of municipality has the power to order a mentally ill person to be kept in
hospital for up to six days and after that a doctor must certify the need for compulsory
admission. So it’s quite a process to go through before somebody can be kept in hospital for
compulsory care. But still: when is somebody mentally ill to such extent, they can be forced
to get treatment?
So the moral case here is that it is really hard to draw a line when categorizing people with
confused behavior. The most important questions are: when is somebody “confused” enough
to be a danger to themselves or others? And when do we have to force these people to get
proper mental healthcare? How can we provide safety to the majority of society without
taking away the rights of the people you force care? Because they also have the right to refuse
care, if they don’t want to be treated.
Stage 2
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