Why doesn't international law include psychiatric law...

[Boojatta]

with procedures to detain not only ordinary citizens, but also heads of state who need to be evaluated to determine whether or not they pose a near-term threat of causing harm to themselves or others?

[uppityperson]

1. Actions are easier to regulate than thoughts.

You can think whatever you want, but cannot act on those thoughts. Once you act, the action is the issue.

[Boojatta]

2. I wasn't proposing a new kind of psychiatric law that considers thoughts in isolation from actions.

Doesn't ordinary psychiatric law in the US require, before a person can be detained for psychiatric evaluation, evidence that the person is in the process of actually doing something that is likely to cause harm in the near future? If the answer is "yes", then international psychiatric law would be similar in that respect.

[cbayer]

3. Laws vary from state to state.

In general, someone can be detained if they appear to present a threat to themselves or others. This detention usually has a time limit during which the person is evaluated by professionals. After this evaluation, the person is either held for a longer period of time or released.

There is not national or international law which includes these kinds of provisions for heads of state. I can't imagine how it could be implemented without becoming a political tool.

[Boojatta]

5. Are you saying that it is already a political tool?

If psychiatric professionals can already evaluate ordinary citizens, then why can't they evaluate heads of state? Why not protect foreigners from mentally ill people who have authority to command military action?

[cbayer]

6. There is international law that governs that.

Individual countries have processes for removing officials that may be suffering from a mental illness. We have the option of impeachment.

Are you suggesting that we place Bush and Cheney in a psychiatric facility for evaluation?

[Boojatta]

7. It's good that nobody was a danger to Salman Rushdie.

He must be ignorant and unaware that international law was protecting him. Or perhaps he is paranoid.

[cbayer]

8. I don't think the Iranian Ayatollahs necessarily see themselves

as subject to international law. International principles, on the other hand, provided Rushdie with protection and there were diplomatic consequences to Iran.

There is a fundamental rule in Psychiatry in the US. You must protect others. If a patient threatens to harm an individual, you are obligated to either put that person somewhere where they can't harm said person or call the person threatened and advise them. That and child abuse are the only times you are allowed to break patient confidentiality. That's off-topic, but I thought you might find it interesting.

[Cleita]

4. International law isn't a neat book of statutes that everyone agrees on.

It's a messy hodgepodge of laws that arise from treaties and other international agreements between nations. Somewhere in there are laws than can apply internationally. However, most nations agree that invading a country to raid it for its assets violates international statutes of most nations, so it seems there needs to be a consensus between nations to remove a leader who is unstable and a threat to his neighbors and the planet at large. This pretty much constituted what the cold war was, a bloc of nations that withheld aid and trade from communist nations like Russia that the so-called free world deemed a threat to the well being of the rest of the world. They never did remove the leaders though because they couldn't without war.