Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
Scott, you obviously know and have thought a lot about all this, but I am uncomfortable on many levels with the notion of courts making more decisions to force people to take medications. I can imagine all sorts of situations where that would happen inappropriately, although I admit it's a trade off between type 1 and type 2 errors.
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Peter, it's a very difficult situation. I could give you many examples where the court has been very compassionate with the mentally ill, and I know helped them. Other situations have not been so great. It's a trade-off between protecting civil rights and protecting the person from themselves, and protecting society from them. In Washington State, we have gone overboard with protecting civil rights, and the people who are put in charge of the mentally ill (in hospitals, jails, courts) are sadly ignorant and underfunded.
Regarding medications, the hospitals here in Washington have proven to be so ignorant at diagnosing mental illnesses, and then at choosing the appropriate medications, that I would have to agree with you. They are allowed to give anti-psychotics only to keep a patient from physically harming others, not to actually help the patient come down from their mania. In other words, a manic or psychotic individual can have their civil rights taken away for 72 hours by a judge, but then is allowed to keep the civil rights which allow them to reject medication to help alleviate the reason that they were incarcerated against their will. So, they are crazy enough to be locked up, but sane enough to not be healed. If I thought the psychiatric facilities had knowledgeable psychiatrists on hand, then I would say "let them diagnose the person and start them on antipsychotics (if they are psychotic) and mood suppressors if they are manic." To me, that is logical. But I didn't write the HIPPA laws, and I'm not a hospital in fear of lawsuits that is overreacting to every little line in said laws.