Who Has The Right To Institutionalize Me ?

Answer to subscriber's question

by aajonus vonderplanitz, ph.d. nutrition

Aajonus, hi. I was recently hospitalized in a mental institution when my mom tried to force me to throw away my high meat and for eating raw meat in general. I was forced by police to go into a hospital for 6 days. The lawyer said I needed a doctor to say I was ok mentally. They said I was a danger to myself for eating raw meat.

I know you have experience dealing with the law in these types of cases. There they took blood from me twice, made me miss a credit card payment. Made me lose a job. Have you ever experienced anything like this? I saw that you were on Ripley's Believe It or Not eating high meat. So now I have to hide every time I have to eat????

What can I do in regards to a lawsuit? How do I protect myself from further hospitalizations? I was forced to “voluntarily” sign an agreement to be admitted and could not leave. Now my insurance has to pay for my stay. I need to sue and get the people who put me in there out of their job. Can they really do this to us?

I am 20. The police department involved was east Hazel Crest, Illinois. They forced me to sign under duress. They said I had to or they’d hold me until a judge saw me which would take all weekend. At the hospital, when I asked if I could leave, several security officers arrived and told me to sit down or they would pump me full of drugs and strap me to the bed.

-- Eric from Chicago

Aajonus: Hi, Eric, You need a good non-judgmental open-minded attorney. If you were under 18 years of age, all it would take would be one of your parents to induct you into a hospital. Since you are over 18, ANYONE must have a court order to force you to do anything. Every thing else is an idle threat that has serious legal constitutional liabilities. In order for the police to seize and hold you, you must be a physical (sharp object, weapon or firearm, or chemical) threat to others or yourself, or be breaking a law. Disobeying your mother, and eating raw and high meat are not crimes.

Whether in the hospital or with the police, they must have authority to hold you for criminal reasons, period. They can threaten you all day but you should not sign. If you feel that you will suffer physical harm if you do not sign, add the words, “Signed under physical threat and duress” as part of your signature. Also, pronounce, “You are making threats of a physical nature to me. Without a warrant or court order, you are subject to criminal kidnapping, and endangerment to my life and liberty. If you try to seize me without warrant or other court order, you will have kidnapped and endangered my life. I assure you that I am of sound mind and body to pursue such legal actions against you.”

There is no legal case or direct science that says eating raw and/or high meat are dangerous and that they could kill you. If it were so, everyone who eats sushi, steak tartare, carpaccio and kibbe would be dead or in jail. There have been and are cultural groups that regularly eat spoiled foods with healthful results and no ill-consequences.

I suggest that for your case, for your attorney, you research all of the cultures that eat decomposing food, including those in Europe that decompose their cheese with worms inside the cheese. Some of them eat the maggots as well as the cheese; the cheese is mainly waste from the maggots, that is, predigested matter that is easily assimilated, as bacteria makes yogurt and is easy to digest. Many Turks use gangrene to cure their meats. If you compile such research to take to court, the police department will negotiate and you should receive anywhere from $3-10k plus attorney expenses, or go to court for their blood and get $200k from the hospital, hospital employees who threatened you, the city, police department and officers who kidnapped you without warrant or court order, or proper probable cause.

The city and courts are very powerful and can threaten your attorney’s ability to function in courts. I have seen many attorneys lose their cases to protect their livelihood. You must get a credible attorney or be ready to try the case yourself if it goes to trial. Citizen's Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is an organization that routinely fights psychiatric abuse; it might be able to help you. You can find them on line at www.cchr.org. On the home page, you can locate a chapter near you and contact it. In some cases, CCHR got directly involved, in most it at least gives good advice.