This is an amazing story. Brooklyn College student Chinemerem Eze, a Nigerian national, was convinced that her landlord had hidden a camera in her apartment. She complained to school officials, who proceeded to arrange for her being committed to a psychiatric ward . . . Then later she found the camera.
I suppose it brings a new meaning to the school’s motto: Nil sine magno labore (“Nothing without great effort”)
Eze is now suing for false imprisonment as well as defamation on the Internet.
The complaint says that Eze went to Brooklyn College’s Office of Campus and Community Safety Services. An ambulance was called and Eze was later committed to Kings County Psychiatric Hospital for two weeks.
According to one report, she previously won $110,000 settlement against the Health and Hospitals Corp.
She found the camera in an air vent.
Eze, 26, is now a student at Macaulay Honors College.
This could make for an interesting case in terms of proximate causation. Clearly, the school itself did not make the decision to commit Eze to the hospital. That decision had to be made by health professionals. The school can argue that they are morally and statutorily bound to seek assistance for students and that the failure to do so can lead to suicides or injuries to others. Yet, this is not the type of case one would relish before a jury.
Source: NY Times
Kudos: Michael Maskell
Jonathan Turley
Something seems to be missing here. There have been a number of cases of secret cameras planted by landlords, business owners, and others. There are websites dedicated to “up-skirt” shots, potty cams, and other peeking up women’s skirts and taking pictures sites.
Such a claim is sadly too common and wouldn’t seem to be an indication of paranoia or delusions in this day and age. So, that being said I feel like something is being left out of this story. The implication is if you suspect a crime is being committed against you or witness one and report it, suddenly that calls one’s mental health into question and said person can be committed? Nobody bothers to even investigate? Just “You need a mental health evaluation.” and off you go?
I fully believe what the Doc said earlier about his experiences in the military. But that’s a whole different world that’s absent due process for anything and rank does indeed have its privileges. When I was in the Army back in the 1970s I saw more than one enlisted man have his military career and life ruined, often involving prison time, by running afoul of some officer’s or higher ranking NCO’s ego. A very good friend was harassed and Article 15’d down to the lowest rank of E1 from the equivalent of a corporal,an SP4. besides the reduction in pay from losing rank, he had almost all his pay forfeited as each Article 15 could take pay for uo to 3 months. He was being written up for petty offenses such as a back pants pocket being unbuttoned, scuffed boots after working all day in a motor pool working on tanks and trucks. The treatment got so bad he saw not way out except to go AWOL. At the time, if you went AWOL for so long, 30 days I think, when you came back you were almost immediately processed out. That was his intent, but the company commander who was his antagonist knew what was up when my friend went AWOL. So he waited 3 days before officially reporting him AWOL. When my friend returned he was only AWOL for 27 days, not 30. Instead of being immediately processed out for being gone over 30 days, he was arrested, charged with AWOL, and put in the post jail where he remained for almost 3 months until his court martial trial came up. It was a purely vindictive move on the CO’s part. The offense? My friend was the Company Commander’s driver and kept the job when the new CO arrived. The new CO was a 2nd lieutenant and due to family connections was given a company command which actually required a rank of Captain or above. It was unheard of in a peace-time situation and purely because he had some very powerful connections who pulled strings to get him a command so fresh out of ROTC. When our unit went on field exercises a few weeks after this lieutenant took command, he began to expect his driver to be his valet. The last straw was when he told his driver, my friend, that he was to clean and spit-shine his boots every night. He already had my friend bringing him breakfast in his private tent each morning. he also wanted him to drive onto post and do his laundry and iron his uniforms later in the week. When my friend, his driver, respectfully declined to clean and shine his boots, he was immediately dismissed as the driver. The harassment began immediately which ended up with a very decent man being branded with a dishonorable discharge for the rest of his life. So, yes, nothing that happens to people in the military who don’t play ball can suffer dire consequences.
Back to the subject at hand- I still feel like something has been left out here. I am not approving of or justifying what happened to her- it infuriates me regardless of the circumstances. But it still seems like we went from 1 to 10 and skipped 2 through 9.
That landlord shuold be noted at the college as a sex preditor and post an advisory notice on the bulletinboard so people know to stay away from his rentals. Personally I’d casterate him.
Kindergarten?
Robert Fulgham, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things” 1986, 1988. I have in hand the December, 1989, First Ballantine Books Edition.
RE: Bipolar Chick, January 18, 2011 at 2:06 am
[begin excerpt]
HOWEVER, there is no biological test for *any* mental illness. That doesn’t mean this psychologist was competent, she sounds like an idiot. I am just pointing out, there is no blood or biological test for mental illness.
I know this isn’t on point, but I just don’t like to leave myths and misunderstandings about mental illness floating out there un-rebutted.
Bipolar Chick
[end excerpt]
################
Because not objecting to evidence of error may be imputed as not recognizing it, I here draw attention to a very commonplace error, one my research was directed toward recognizing and correcting. I here leave not un-rebutted what I find to be a nearly universally found error.
There is a biological test for mental illness, it is described in my dissertation in poor-to-fair detail, and I have been using it at least since being, in the conventional sense, an infant.
The test is done by listening to and talking with people by the person doing the test as a “biological test instrument.” The test procedure elicits signs of time-confusion and time-corrupted learning, those being the manifest evidence of mental illness as a brain-biology process. The mechanism of the test is the person doing the test being as direct and truthful as would be a newborn infant who was born fully capable of understanding and using human language, and whose life circumstances preclude and prevent internalization of deception.
At the Carleton College Class of 1961 reunion in 2006, one of my classmates gave me a book, Theodore Roethke:Selected Poems, Edward Hirsh, ed., American Poets Project, The Library of America, 2005.
Within my grasp of fair use, from page 41, the first stanza of “Where Knock Is Open Wide”:
A kitten can
Bite with his feet;
Papa and Mamma
Have more teeth.
Buy a copy, borrow a copy, read a copy in a library, and read the whole of that poem, page 41 through 44, and then find whether you are unable to cry.
The test for mental illness is, as previously given:
1. Ever make mistakes?
2. Ever make a mistake you shouldn’t have made?
3. Ever make a mistake you could have avoided?
A perfect score for a mentally ill person is answering, “Yes,” to all three of those simple, little-child-like questions.
That test is found, in my experience, as the core question of every religious and non-religious human tradition which enables contention. Contention as process is identically mental illness as process.
As I observe, I do not judge.
As I judge not, neither will I be judged.
All that we need to understand, we understood before we were born.
I did not need to wait for kindergarten.
RE: Tootie, January 17, 2011 at 10:09 am
Your thoughts go to a more important point, who gets to decide who is crazy?
There is a heavy hitter in the field of psychiatry named Thomas Szatz who…
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I make typos, too. I believe you are referring to Thomas Stephen Szasz, who wrote the book, “The myth of mental illness: foundations of a theory of personal conduct,” Paladin, London,1972.
I find that people sometimes mis-read the book title; having the book and having read it, it does not mean, “Mental Illness is a Myth.”
I find Szasz used the word, “Myth” in the sense of a pre-scientific understanding of something significant; so the book title, made much less dramatic, might be, “The Pre-scientific Understanding of Mental Illness.”
If “the mind” be the activity of the brain, then there can be no mental illness which is not brain illness, and, the brain being physical, there can be no brain illness which is not an illness of the physical brain.
Which makes the question, “Who decides what is illness and who is ill?” one fraught with peril if the decision is made by a majority of people in some perhaps-arbitrary group; if an arbitrary group decides what mental illness is and is not, we are right back to the finding of David Rosenhan in his 1973 Science paper, “On Being Sane in Insane Places.”
I state without equivocation, that I have never made a mistake which I could have avoided because, to have avoided it before making it, I would already have needed to have made it in order to learn how to not make it, and in learning how to not make the mistake, it had to first have been made.
So, as a minority of one, were I to stumble into telling what I find insanity to be, I would state that I find insanity to be believing that what is is what is not and that what is not is what is.
Thus, tell me that I made a mistake I could have avoided making and that I deserve to be punished for my crime, and I will say that I am being told that what I learned only while making the mistake I fully understood before making it, and I will say that I am being told that what was was not what it was when it was what it was, and I will say that I am being told to accept an insane belief.
Or, tell me that I made a mistake and broke a law and that I could have avoided making the mistake because a hypothetical reasonable person would have avoided making the mistake I made and I will say that I am not a hypothetical person and that I cannot do what a hypothetical reasonable person can do because I am not a hypothetical person, reasonable or not, and I will say that requiring me to have the abilities of a hypothetical person who can never exist is asking me to accept an insane belief.
Whosoever believes that a hypothetical reasonable person is a valid standard of conduct for any actual person is harboring an insane belief.
That a real person can do what a hypothetical person can do is one of the Myths of Mental Illness, such that whosoever harbors such myth is thereby mentally ill.
Yikes!
The following comment/poem is adjacent to Martha Mitchell’s photo in her high school yearbook:
I love its gentle warble,
I love its gentle flow,
I love to wind my tongue up
And I love to let it go.
In 1977, Nixon told David Frost, “If it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate.” (wikipedia)
I forgot to include this ealier, in my comment about Martha Mitchell.
The Martha Mitchell effect: the process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly.
According to Bell et al., “Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness,” due to a “failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.”
They note that typical examples of such situations, may include:
-Pursuit by practitioners of organized crime
-Surveillance by law enforcement officers
-Infidelity by a spouse (from wikipedia)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell_effect
lottakatz,
As you said, all she did was tell the truth. And she died when she was only 57. A tragic story…
(Thanks for your insights… Wicked times, then and now.)
Anon Nurse, thanks for reminding me about Martha Mitchell, when that happened it actually scared me, the cold war was raging at that time and we knew the Soviets handled their dissidents that way. I knew she was guilty of telling the truth and that she could be disappeared into the mental health system told me everything I needed to know about the Nixon administration and the relative virtue of our government.
What also struck me at the time was that her incarceration wasn’t followed up in the media. I think only an article in Rolling Stone or Mother Jones analyzed it and folded it into a larger story. It wasn’t a story. That was a bellweather moment in American politics.
The bible of mental health diagnosis is the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association)
which IO urge people to actually read. It is the single most important tool for judging the nature and extent of mental illness.
Read through it and you will begin to doubt your own sanity, since so much of it can be applied subjectively to one’s own mental status. The second flaw with this book is that decisions as to various diagnoses and diagnostic criteria are made by committees that are highly responsive to psychological politics.
As a mental health professional I’ve learned to be skeptical about the entire diagnostic system and its effectiveness in determining who is in need of psychological help. In this instance, the student, who probably displayed considerable distress and dared to argue her case, wound up in Kings County as an inmate. While I do believe in the need some people have for mental health treatment, I am also sure that such treatment as yet doesn’t represent exact science and is too often subject
to the subjectivity of the mental health practitioner, who in many cases suffer from their own psychological dysfunction.
Tootie, by the way, while I agree with some of your comments, your belief that “Obamacare” will have any effect on this is simply an example of your partisan prejudice and has no factual basis.
Given my work in the ER and with law enforcement, I can tell you that this is not an isolated case. We’re on a very slippery slope.
The “facts” are often in short supply, as is the case with this woman. At the same time, the misrepresentations of those in power are often enough to “convince” those involved that an involuntary admission is in everyone’s best interest.
Martha Mitchell was thought to be delusional when she spoke up about widespread corruption in the Nixon White House. We know how that turned out…
The Nation: The Misfortunes of Martha- TIME
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907272,00.html
As lottakatz noted, psychiatric reprisals were common in the USSR — it was not uncommon for dissidents to be falsely diagnosed with progressive schizophrenia (of the “sluggish” type). As we’ve seen with Russell Tice, the doctor mentioned in a previous comment, and others (some known to me), it’s happening here, as well.
http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/30/12/456
Re: Thomas Szasz, noting the correct spelling of his name
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz
I read the complaint that her lawyer filed. Remember, the “facts” in the complaint against the college are just allegations. I don’t think we know enough about what happened at the college to make any determination at this point as to the whether she was falsely imprisoned. A big issue here is that this woman was from another country and was frightened of authority. She was afraid to go to the police when she saw the camera and discovered her roommates were ratting her out online.
As to the question of “who decides you’re crazy”, it’s a judge. Not an MD in an ER who may not even be a shrink.
Bipolar Chick, thanks for the info.
The problem with someone, some third party, managing to have the most recent assassin committed to a mental institution is that laws permitting that to be done can be used to abuse Ms. Chinemerem Eze in ways more direct that just tricking her into the system. Given time, and put into the hands of unscrupulous politicians, every ‘peculiar’ thought by every dissident will result in a stay in a mental hospital. As Dr. Harris pointed out, in such a system protestations that you are not mad are considered manifestations of illness.
There is even a corollary in the parole system of the justice system, you must take responsibility for your crime when going before the board. Even if you are not guilty of the crime for which you were convicted, to maintain your innocence is to damn your chance for parole.
As I recall Communist Russia was famous for locking it’s dissidents away in mental hospitals. Considering how hostile this country is to dissent from the left I’d be unhappy with some knee-jerk response to this latest shooting that made it easier for a state or the feds to lock someone away before that person proved to be a danger to themselves and others. That’s not to say there aren’t ways to lessen the threat a potentially dangerous, mentally ill person may present, there are, but just making it easier for third parties to have someone locked away in hospitals is a little too convenient for abuse not to quickly take root in the system.
Tootie,
I have read Szatz’s work as well, and I think you may have misunderstood one point. It is absolutely true that most mental illnesses are caused by bio-chemical imbalances and neurotransmitter disruptions. It is also true that *over the lifetime* of a mentally ill patient, there will be changes in and damage of brain structures.
HOWEVER, there is no biological test for *any* mental illness. That doesn’t mean this psychologist was competent, she sounds like an idiot. I am just pointing out, there is no blood or biological test for mental illness.
I know this isn’t on point, but I just don’t like to leave myths and misunderstandings about mental illness floating out there un-rebutted.
Bipolar Chick
Federal LEO
It seems the folks who committed the woman did the best job of acting and deserve the awards. They acted intelligent and competent. It must have been a stretch for them.
Envelope please!
Check Book please….
The predicament is simple. If a person does something not of mental illness which someone with authority incorrectly classifies as of mental illness because the something is unfamiliar to the authority, the person who asserts not being mentally ill will often find that valid assertion deemed denial and a sign of mental illness.
I think, in doing fieldwork research, I flew under the Cuckoo’s nest which wasn’t there.
Anon Nurse,
Even more reason Ms. Arkansas should have won, in addition to being more beautiful and possessing a much better physique. I must admit that since I do not have a TV my source of information for this contest is HuffPo
Since you brought it up, FFLEO… (Miss Arkansas is quite the ventriloquist yodeller. 🙂 )
The following should be heartening to all, especially the Koch brothers. (She’s lovely and only 17, but…)
http://boingboing.net/2011/01/15/miss-america-2011-wi.html
Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan, became champion of the 2011 Miss America pageant tonight. She has deep thoughts on foreign policy and radical transparency.
She won after strutting in a black bikini and a white evening gown, playing “White Water Chopped Sticks” on piano and telling the audience that when it comes to the website Wikileaks, security should come before public access to government information.
“You know when it came to that situation, it was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people’s right to know, because it’s so important that everybody who’s in our borders is safe and so we can’t let things like that happen, and they must be handled properly,” she said.