On local, state, and national levels today, mental health is a trending topic of concern. As politicians seek to emanate compassion either genuinely or pretentiously, many often unite behind the expansion and strengthening of mental health care, its infrastructure, and legal frameworks surrounding it with not a shadow of doubt.

 

However, perhaps we should approach the topic of mental health with a healthy dose of discernment and skepticism, and perhaps we should speak out to ensure our elected leaders do the same because the expansion of mental health care is not without its risks for our society. An article last month caught my attention.

 

This year’s American Psychological Association (APA) conference, funded partially by the Department of Justice, promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and included talk of utilizing psychological practices to promote anti-racism, per an investigation conducted by Accuracy in Media and reported on this August by the National News Desk. The National News Desk’s article also noted that Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, “criticized the approach, arguing that techniques developed for clinical treatment were being applied to political and ideological objectives.”

 

The use of mental health care by activists and political operatives to achieve political ends is indeed a valid concern, and this conference is just one crack giving us some light with which to consider the threat in advance. 

 

And it begs the question—why did our current Department of Justice finance a woke APA conference that was promoting the use of psychology to advance the political aims of DEI in the first place when the administration shuns DEI in every other institution? Was it a simple mistake? Maybe.

 

But perhaps the government didn’t really care about DEI in this conference because the politicization of mental health, in principle, might just suit its own ends in the long run. After all, when the government sees an opportunity for extending its own power, in any administration, does it ever hold itself back? 

 

Make no mistake, the Trump administration is eager to embrace mental health care as a means to accomplish its own political agenda. For now, that end is a seemingly good one—reducing homelessness. However, the push by each side to use mental health care as a political tool, when combined with the administration’s current efforts to expand governmental powers in the name of mental health, is creating a dangerous opportunity for the political weaponization of mental health care by an abusive government.

 

The door is now wide open (and widening) for both psychology and psychiatry to become weaponized by an abusive government and its ideological allies to both circumvent citizens’ Constitutional rights and to quell political and ideological opposition with relative ease. If allowed to continue, the politicization and political weaponization of mental health care could allow the government to one day imprison, disarm, and chemically subjugate uncooperative citizens without due process. 

 

Imagine a world where law enforcement deems you mentally unstable and a threat to society because of some strongly held political or religious belief you express and detains you for an involuntary commitment in a mental health hospital. Imagine, in the hospital, affirming that you pray and listen to God’s voice; and a psychiatrist deems you mentally ill or incompetent because of your faith. Or imagine your political beliefs and ideas are deemed by a psychiatrist as threatening to society, as a sign of mental illness, and as a signal of your incapacity to understand reality (as they see it). Imagine doctors and mental health professionals label you with a (quack) diagnosis and prescribe you drugs with dangerous side effects. Imagine you can’t say no.

 

It may seem a dystopic and exaggerated picture, but this is not beyond the realm of possibility. Already, law enforcement can haul you away to a mental institution involuntarily. Laws are in place to allow 72-hour involuntary mental health crisis holds here in Nevada at the subjective discretion of law enforcement or medical professionals should they deem you a threat.

 

And now, thanks to Governor Joe Lombardo, the law also allows for the temporary seizure of your firearms in the event law enforcement does choose to haul you away. No warrants, no court, no need to have a lawyer present, no defense—just compliance. And while patients held for 72 hours involuntarily still, fortunately, maintain the right to refuse medication in Nevada (be sure to remember that info!), courts do have the power to commit individuals against their will for longer terms and to force their compliance with treatments (I.e.—to force medications upon them.)

 

And as if the existing legal framework around mental health care wasn’t already powerful and dangerous enough in its current state, the Trump administration now wants to make it even easier for government entities across the nation to involuntarily commit their citizens—particularly the homeless—for supposed mental health concerns.

 

Among other things, Trump’s Executive Order 14321 instructed the head of the DOJ to “seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.” 

 

In other words, Trump wants the DOJ not to follow our laws as they have been established and interpreted in the courts. Rather, he wants the Attorney General to actively oppose and tear down the judicial interpretations of our laws when they are found to protect the independence of our citizens from government control and present roadblocks to the involuntary commitment of citizens deemed by the government to be mentally ill threats. 

 

Further, the executive order also promotes state-level “identification, adoption, and implementation of maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and ‘step-down’ treatment standards that allow for the appropriate commitment and treatment of individuals with mental illness who pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.” (Emphasis added)

 

Maximally flexible civil commitment means that the government wants loose standards with which it can play. It wants as few restrictions as possible placed upon it. And what will the authorities define as threatening?

 

Well, to be maximally flexible, perhaps whatever it feels is threatening or dangerous—be it an idea, an internet post, or even simply the anger expressed by a citizen who was just threatened with involuntary commitment. What will the authorities consider as a signal of mental illness? To be maximally flexible, perhaps whatever it feels is hostile, irrational, archaic, conspiratorial, or disturbed.

 

Is this all vague and undefined and outlandish? Perhaps, but maximally flexible doesn’t embrace specificity or definition. Maximally flexible embraces the outlandish to maximize authority, and that in itself is the problem.

 

It is clear. The policy of our federal government is to support the growth of as much federal and state power to institutionalize as possible so that, at its own convenience and discretion, it has the authority to do with citizens as it pleases for the benefit of its own political ends—and all it’ll have to do is slap on the label “mentally ill.” Truly, it is a ‘just add water’ recipe for disaster! 

 

And be aware, on local and state levels, the focus on and investment in mental health is massive. In Washoe County alone, the county committed over $10m to a behavioral health endowment fund at the end of last year and invested $23m in building the Washoe Behavioral Health Center. The state of Nevada, on the other hand, is building the Southern Nevada Forensic Facility with almost 300 beds to “restore competency” for prisoners. The physical infrastructure to hold mental health patients is growing.

 

Our government is pouring its heart and soul into mental health, and we cannot lazily content ourselves with the assumption that it is purely benign. It is investing massive quantities of taxpayer dollars in a state-sponsored mental healthcare infrastructure and, at the same time, seeking to sharpen the government’s legal teeth to coerce citizens into “care” and to circumnavigate their legal and Constitutional rights.  If this trend continues, people’s lives and health may one day be seriously interfered with for any number of reasons, and they may be left with little recourse but to comply with the demands of the government and the diagnoses of government-licensed and funded doctors.

 

As conservatives, we ought to view our ever-growing government with due skepticism just as our founding fathers did; and we must use discernment to identify the growing threats to our liberty and Constitutional rights, particularly through the realm of mental health.

 

“Liberalism is a mental illness” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” may be fun little monikers for now, but what happens if they are taken seriously and used to tear away Constitutional rights and individual liberties? What if they are turned against us, and suddenly conservatism and Christianity are deemed the mental illnesses needing cure?

 

Please be aware, and please be wise! I hope this article at least stirs some thought, some discussion, and some resistance to the steady erosion of our rights under the pervasive excuse of health and safety.

 

 

PS—Please also take time to note a common player. Why is it that the Department of Justice and not the Department of Health and Human Services is funding the APA’s psychology conference, let alone a conference advocating the politicization of mental health care? And note it is the Attorney General who leads the DOJ that President Trump set at the forefront of the push for increased government power to institutionalize citizens. The DOJ is used for the prosecution of criminals and, increasingly in today’s environment, political rivals—not for public health. Something to consider...