Do you really have to be legally insane just to get mental health treatment after committing a crime, especially when you are an adult?
I am sometimes delusional, think irrationally and sometimes become aggressive when I am scared and still know right from wrong. I mean, come on! I am an adult, 21 years old, of course I know right from wrong, I was thought to know right from wrong for the past 21 years, I am an adult, not a 15 year old.
I think the insanity defense test is useless to test adults who are delusional, because they can still understand right from wrong and criminal charges against them from a useless test, they are adults after all.
My mild delusions that I had comes from the same phenomena of a very serious mental illness.
What is the difference between my delusions I had and psychotic delusions? Symptom of delusion comes under psychosis. I am a bit confused.
I mostly had mild hallucinations, delusions of grounder of paranoid nature and had some mild Fregoli related phenomena on Quora, Google Messages and Meta Messenger, but I still knew right from wrong, just irrational.
Nice topic. Im skeptical about it too. I think not knowing right from wrong is hard to prove, even a person in a sane state I believe proves to himself that murdering someone is the right thing to do then does it. They know its legally wrong of course but if they really understood it was wrong in most cases they wouldnt have done it. I think the law should be changed to just simply that the person was sick when they did it and the punishment should be medicalized as it is now.
Its a complicated subject and there is professionals specialized in it. Lawyers, judges, forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, etc I once had a forensic psychologist talk about it in psychology class, he told us horrible real stories where its clear that a sane person wouldn’t do it like killing own’s mother or babies, but in other cases its more complicated. Court decides.
And these people who are found insane criminals are sent to a maximum security forensic mental hospital for life. In very rare cases and after many years of compliance they may transfer them to a better place or maybe release them.
The courts go off of legal definitions, not psychological definitions.
The legal precedence for insanity goes back to the 1800s, and it was established in England. It’s called the M’Naghten rule. Since then, most developed countries adopted this rule, which basically states insanity is based on the knowledge of right or wrong.
It is completely at odds with psychology, but legally ensures most people see harsh punishment, regardless of actual insanity. It’s a win for law and order, and that’s why it goes unchallenged, because to do so, would undermine law and order.
The reason why I asked a legal issue question related to my serious mental health crisis related to Bipolar Disorder, it is because I sometimes go through different types of delusions depending on my moods, and I sometimes am volent when I am scared, and when I stop being delusional, I start to feel very guilty for what I have done. Legal definition of insanity sounds too narrow for my situation, because I understand right from wrong, but I sometimes cannot appreciate the consequences of my actions when I am sometimes delusional.
I know that I incriminated myself a little bit, because being violent is a felony, but I need help, because I don’t become violent for fun, I become violent when I have grandiose delusions of paranoid nature. I hope you know what I mean. Thank you!
