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Show Charge Many Sane Persons are Railroaded into Mental Hospitals r Thousands of normal men and women are railroaded into the mental hospitals yearly under faulty laws passed to "improve" commitment procedures, says an article in the February Readers Digest, citing information made available by the American Bar Foundation. The laws, passed at the urging of the U. S. Dept. ofHealth, Education Edu-cation and Welfare, psychiatrists and mental hospital superintendents, superintend-ents, are supposed to make it easier for the mentally ill to get treatment. Instead, Albert Q. Maisel writes, they have helped divorce seeking spouses, estate-hungry estate-hungry relatives and busybodies to "put away" sane men and women. The article is entitled, "The Tragedy of Sane People Who Get 'Put Away.' " Gov. Michael DiSalle of Ohio told a senate subcommittee that a survey in his state found 4500 elderly men and women forced into mental hospitals because relatives or their communities didn't want to care for them. An Illinois man rushed his wife into a mental hospital while she was bedridden with injuries from an auto accident. Similar injustices were reported in California, No. Carolina, and Mississippi. One Detroit woman lost 16 years of freedom as the result of an unjust un-just commitment; another, 19 years. An Indiana man unjustly committed in 1897 was freed just three years ago. The American Bar Association and such senators as Sam Ervin of North Carolina and Kenneth Keating of New York are moving to reform the "reform" measures and in only 13 states is there any provision for a jury in a sanity hearing and not in all cases. In many states the person whose liberty is at stake need not be notified that his case is coming nn Fourteen states make no pro- vision for the person to be represented rep-resented by counsel. In ten states there is no court procedure at all: the alleged mentally ill can be locked up on the certification of two physicians; and in most states the examining physicians need not have any psychiatric training. |