Most here are no stranger to my take on the mental health question/Industry.
It's not only grossly destructive but already prohibited by Federal Statutes.
Beginning With:
18C95 Sec 1958: Murder For Hire
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2012/05/us-18c95-sec-1958-skull-at-banquet.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_jurisprudence
TJ researchers and practitioners typically make use of social science methods and data to study the extent to which a legal rule or practice affects the psychological well-being of the people it affects, and then explore ways in which anti-therapeutic consequences can be reduced, and therapeutic consequences enhanced, without breaching due process requirements.[1]
Without breaching due process? The hell it does.
Uses Social Science Methods? Social Science is to Science what Social Justice is to Justice.
What Therapeutic Jurisprudence does is shove the Law aside based upon Social Science Methods, IE: Collectivist Philosophy.
Since the Judge is rarely an accredited expert in this area, it's Bring on the Quacks as the required Expert Witnesses.
The aforementioned Quacks are allowed, as a State Determined 'Standard of Care' to invoke their own standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_privilege
A therapeutic privilege (or therapeutic exception) refers to an uncommon situation whereby a physician may be excused from revealing information to a patient when disclosing it would pose a serious psychological threat, so serious a threat as to be medically contraindicated.[1] The therapeutic privilege is an exception to the general rule of informed consent, and only applies when disclosure of the information itself could pose serious and immediate harm to the patient, such as prompting suicidal behavior.[2] The exception of therapeutic privilege does not apply when disclosure will merely lead to refusal of care that the physician thinks beneficial.[1]
Abdelhak et al. state:[3]
Some state laws severely restrict access to mental health records. Some require attending physicians to document in the record that they believe that access to the information contained in the medical record would harm their patients. Under the HIPAA privacy rule, if a licensed health care professional has determined, in the exercise of professional judgement, that the access requested is reasonably likely to endanger the life or physical safety of the individual or another person, the facility may then refuse such a request; however, this is a reviewable decision that affords the patient an appeal option.
Which results in the easily foreseeable:
Psychiatrists and Psychologists Are Not Reliable Witnesses
http://psychroaches.blogspot.com/2014/11/psychiatrists-and-psychologists-not.html?m=0
So, yes, this is a power grab and a very nasty one fraught with the potential for endless Abuses of the Legal system.
In this age of snowflakes triggered by the least comment, lack of comment, look, appearance, etc., and increasingly supported by the Social Science industry (hey, more money, more clients, more grants), there is no longer a reasonable threshold of 'threat' to determine if someone should be threatened.
At one time, a clear statement of intent to do harm, to self or others, was sometimes sufficient. The production of ("brandishing") a weapon, with a clear threat implied, might also be considered a 'threat'.
However we live in a day and age of busybodies and the most thin-skinned American people I can recall, in experience or account, in which some neighbor seeing you carry in the toy gun for your kid's birthday may have a cartwheeling emo-fit and promptly call 911 to report the impending slaughter emanating from your domicile.
Perhaps one expresses some distress over (pick all which apply) marital problems/kids/work/no work/life changes/health/etc and the person interprets that (in a fit of dime-store 'as seen on TeeVee' psychoanalysis) as a 'cry for help' and the intent to commit felonious and lethal acts upon self and others.
In short, rather than have a standard by which a reasonable person would be convinced of a likely or even actual threat, the bar has been lowered to the most irrational (paranoid, anyone?) belief held on the most tenuous of precepts that someone might do harm to themselves or another, evinced by someone who is either overly sensitive or programmed by the emotional manipulations of the MSM and other Media.
As we have seen, for some, this threat level includes kicking kids out of school for pointing a finger and saying "bang", or chewing their pop-tart in a manner proscribed by extremist hoplophobes anywhere. God forbid the children have water pistols....
Again, I wonder just what is in the water in that state (Commonwealth), and am ever reminded that Massachusetts is the home of the original American Witch Hunt.
I have some knowledge of Social Services, their supposed threat levels, their propensity for incontinent prevarication about someone they have decided to target. They seldom, in the instances I know of, solve problems, but instead invade lives on the thinnest precepts, break up families, and add entire levels of stress to people who are often just going through some already tough times. They do all this with the skimpiest of anonymously provided 'evidence', stuff which would be harshly refuted gossip if anyone even knew who to refute, and carry on with the full faith and credit of the courts because they have a license issued by other practitioners of their faith. I have little faith in their 'standards' to justify the unapologetic persecution of people having ordinary problems living ordinary lives, who would mostly resolve their issues on their own given the chance, and likely in far less time and at far less expense.
I am assured that they often do good things for people who have bad problems, but know of no such instances I can point to. The situations I know of involved the inflation of small troubles into major events through the carefully worded parlance and entrapping questions of skilled inquisitors to permit the further invasion of lives, iften at great pecuniary and emotional expense borne by the recipients of that social largess.
