Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 May 8

= May 8 =

Patient 18
Hi everyone, I hope that all of you are fine. Friends, I saw an interview on YouTube with a young man who is at a mental hospital in California (it was in 1961) and it's a famous interview. He has schizophrenia, and talks about his dreams of becoming a piano teacher.

My question is as follows, is his 1961 diagnosis still a criteria for commitment to a psychiatric facility? Have the laws/criteria changed?

Thank you and excuse ignorance, as I'm no professional on any of these fields. CoryGlee (talk) 11:15, 8 May 2024 (UTC)


 * The laws and their interpretations differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but I think that the general principle is that involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital requires a determination that the patient is mentally incapable of taking care of themself or is a danger to themself or others. Many (perhaps most) people who are diagnosed with schizophrenia can nevertheless take care of their own affairs and present no danger to others. --Lambiam 20:35, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

How short could the beta-decay half-life of a nuclide be?
Even the most neutron-rich nuclides like 19B has a half-life of >1 ms. Theoretically speaking, could a nuclide's beta-decay half-life reach <1 ms? Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 11:55, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It can, but extremally neutron rich nuclei tend to decay by emitting neutrons, which makes beta decay difficult to observe. Ruslik_ Zero 12:08, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Many nuclides are known with beta decay half lives under a millisecond. Thulium-180, to pick one example, decays 100% by beta- decay, and has a half life of 0.3 ms.  If you want to explore the landscape, the table of nuclides here  is a good place to start. Anything in light blue decays primarily by beta- decay, and the farther you get from the central "valley of stability" the shorter the half lives tend to become. PianoDan (talk) 04:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
 * For a number of nuclides, though – including 180Tm – the half-life has not been measured directly and only lower bounds have been reported. But there's nothing in theory that prevents beta decay with a half-life shorter than 1 millisecond, aside from competition from other decay modes. The shortest I've seen in NUBASE2020 is a half-life of $1.5 ms$ for 35Na, though that is only 1$$\sigma$$ from the 1-ms boundary. Complex / Rational  15:14, 10 May 2024 (UTC)