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Excited Delirium Sunshine?


bernorange

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A small change in wording by medical examiners could have a big impact on how deaths in police custody are reported. In March, the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME) said "excited delirium" should not be cited as a cause of death.

"Instead," the organization said, "NAME endorses that the underlying cause, natural or unnatural (to include trauma), for the delirious state be determined (if possible) and used for death certification." While that guidance is not legally binding, it further undermines the concept of excited delirium, which proponents describe as a state of wild agitation or distress, often resulting from illicit drug use, that can lead to sudden cardiac arrest. NAME now joins the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association in not recognizing excited delirium as a cause of death.
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For decades, excited delirium diagnoses have helped police and correctional officers avoid liability for killing suspects. The NAME announcement is a welcome acknowledgment that medical examiners have an ethical duty to independently report the truth.

https://reason.com/2023/06/27/excited-delirium-is-no-excuse-for-police-abuse/

Maybe LEOs will be trained to handle situations involving folks with medical problems differently and save some lives instead of ending them.

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2 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

YOu know what, I'm just relieved I opened this thread and Bernorange wasn't ranting about financial market based conspiracies. ...

You aren't fooling anyone you know.  We know you love you some financial market based conspiracies.

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Excited Delirium gives LEO carte blanche to treat all manner of medical distress with prejudice (as illegal drug use).  Hopefully, there will be some change to their training and procedures to actually evaluate cases where people are suffering medical issues.

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9 minutes ago, bernorange said:

You aren't fooling anyone you know.  We know you love you some financial market based conspiracies.

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Excited Delirium gives LEO carte blanche to treat all manner of medical distress with prejudice (as illegal drug use).  Hopefully, there will be some change to their training and procedures to actually evaluate cases where people are suffering medical issues.

Being a police officer has transitioned from being an honorable, respected profession that impoarted social status to the officers to one today that borders somewhere between suspcion to straight up distaste for many Americans. And as a result, the kind of people who gravitate to becoming police officers skews towards dumber, angry people who want the power the job gives them over people who don't like them. Petty high school bullies who like being bullies. And there are literally hundreds of ways to make more money in less dangerous professions. What's my point you ask?

No one who's a cop wants to chagne anything about how they treat mentally ill people, or people in general. If anything, they want less transparency and oversight into their behavior. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
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  • 5 months later...
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...  the end of a pivotal year for the long-standing, nationwide effort to discard the use of excited delirium in official proceedings. Over the past 40 years, the discredited, racially biased theory has been used to explain away police culpability for many in-custody deaths. But in October, the American College of Emergency Physicians disavowed a key paper that seemingly gave it scientific legitimacy, and the College of American Pathologists said it should no longer be cited as a cause of death.

That same month, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the nation’s first law to ban the term “excited delirium” as a diagnosis and cause of death on death certificates, autopsy reports, and police reports. Legislators in other states are expected to consider similar bills next year, and some law enforcement agencies and training organizations have dropped references to excited delirium from their policy manuals and pulled back from training police on the debunked theory.
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The use of the term “excited delirium syndrome” became pervasive after the American College of Emergency Physicians published a white paper on it in 2009. It proposed that individuals in a mental health crisis, often under the influence of drugs or alcohol, can exhibit superhuman strength as police try to control them, and then die suddenly from the condition, not the police response.

The ACEP white paper was significant in catalyzing police training and policy, said Marc Krupanski, director of criminal justice and policing at Arnold Ventures, one of the largest nonprofit funders of criminal justice policy. The theory contributed to deaths, he said, because it encouraged officers to apply greater force rather than call medical professionals when they saw people in aggressive states.

After George Floyd’s 2020 death, which officers blamed on excited delirium, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association formally rejected it as a medical condition. Then came disavowals from the National Association of Medical Examiners and the emergency physicians’ and pathologists’ groups this year.

The moves by medical societies to renounce the term have already had tangible, albeit limited, effects. In November, Lexipol, a training organization used by thousands of public safety agencies in the U.S., reiterated its earlier move away from excited delirium, citing the California law and ACEP’s retraction of the 2009 white paper.

Lexipol now guides officers to rely on what they can observe, and not to guess at a person’s mental status or medical condition, said Mike Ranalli, a lawyer and police trainer with the Texas-based group. “If somebody appears to be in distress, just get the EMS,” he said, referring to emergency medical services.
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https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/12/as-foundation-for-excited-delirium-testimony-by-police-cracks-fallout-spreads.html

 

 

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