Combating the ills of involuntary intake: a critical rhetorical analysis of Colorado’s state psychiatric policies for suicidal patients

ABSTRACT

In the state of Colorado, people deemed a danger to themselves can be committed to a psychiatric hospital regardless of whether or not they consent to such treatment. Despite the life-saving potential of this practice, the mode through which psychiatric professionals are legally mandated to enact it - by completing the ‘M-1 form' - is deeply flawed. This document forces healthcare providers to make judgments based on personal appearance and performance in ways that normalize white, heterosexual, cissexual modes of living, and reflect oppressive histories of psychiatry functioning as a force for policing societal Others. This essay offers a contextual history of psychiatric oppression in order to critique the current intake document using a critical rhetorical approach. Following this analysis, it offers recommendations for the document’s revision in an effort to improve psychiatric care and experiences of suicidal patients.

KEYWORDS:

• Biocriticism
• mental healthcare
• psychiatric rhetoric
• rhetoric of health and medicine
• suicide

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Dr. Danielle Endres and Dr. Greg Dickinson for their rhetoric courses that guided this project. Additionally, the author thanks Dr. Debbie Dougherty and the two anonymous reviewers for their care and dedication to improving this manuscript. Reviewer Two was a real champion, counter to common academic jokes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Though some prefer person-first language (e.g. ‘people experiencing suicidality’ over ‘suicidal people’), I choose not to engage this practice here. I am part of the disability studies/activism sect that believes people-first language can be detrimental because it enables outsiders to separate people from their disabilities/illnesses in ways that embodied experience does not allow. In line with this and my history as a suicidal person speaking with others with similar experiences, I chose disability-first language in this case.

2 This fear of anti-queer violence in psychiatric care is not without base. At the time of this writing, 31 states still allow conversion therapy to be conducted on minors (Movement Advancement Project, 2019).