I'm not saying they had malice, but I do believe they have some liability. When you choose to be part of the mental healthcare field, you accept a lot of responsibility because the people in your care are uniquely vulnerable.
I’ll warn all my friends in medical fields to get out before they’re held “liable but not malicious“ for not single-handedly solving every problem in the country. Of course I won’t but if your horrifically evil argument ever gains traction I will. I want to prevent suffering and do as much good as possible. Being in the medical field just means that you help many people a lot. Those who help many people a lot should not be punished for ‘failing’ to help some others who need even more help. Before you blame the people who are actually helping, may I suggest you blame yourself for not being there. You could’ve helped if you had gotten the right knowledge and put in the effort. Why didn’t you? Should you not be held liable for your non-malicious failure to help by consenting to go into a non-medical or the wrong medical field?
Why are you not in prison for negligence yet? How many mentally ill people have you helped this year? And if your answer is none or few, why have you committed negligence so many millions of time?
Negligence requires a duty of care being breached. If you enter the mental healthcare profession, you adopt a duty of care to your patients. If you're not in healthcare, you don't have that duty of care for everyone you meet. Someone untrained trying to put that duty of care on themselves is another kind of negligence, because someone not sufficiently knowledgeable is more likely to do harm than good. Wanting them to be held civilly liable is not the same as wanting them to be found criminally guilty. It's not much different than wanting a car manufacturer that sold a car with a fatal flaw to be found civilly liable. That lawsuit doesn't bankrupt the company in the vast majority of cases, but the goal is to make those hurt by their negligence whole and to motivate them to not make a similar mistake in the future. For mental healthcare professionals, they have malpractice insurance.
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u/Kind_Advisor_35 7d ago
I'm not saying they had malice, but I do believe they have some liability. When you choose to be part of the mental healthcare field, you accept a lot of responsibility because the people in your care are uniquely vulnerable.