Forced Medication, Pro v. Con

I've posted a few times on the issue of forcing patients to take meds on pain of forced hospitalization--which is to say soft imprisonment--and yesterday the Wall Street Journal ran a series of letters responding to their earlier article on the subject. The Trouble with Spikol has posted the letters, which nicely illustrate the divisions on this issue. My view is that forced medication is an unacceptable intrusion on personal liberties, unethical (oh, so we can give you meds that hurt your body just because we say you need them?) and deeply paternalistic. It annoys me deeply that the nation's leading mental health advocacy group, NAMI, continues to argue for forced medication. As long as a patient has not committed acts of violence or other crimes (and both of those would need to be proven in a court of law not by presumption), then I am against forced medication. If the mentally ill do not have civil liberties and the right to determine what goes into their own bodies, then who does? The Constitution applies to the mentally ill, too. If they have committed violence or other crimes (again, as proven in a court of law), then medicate them. Aside from that, fuck this shit.