Treading on the Liberties of the Mentally-Ill

I've posted before about the practice of outpatient commitment, or forced medication of the mentally ill outside of hospitals based upon the presumption that some people are too crazy--ok, psychotic--to be permitted to exercise their own free will. It's back in the news again thanks to an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal (thanks to The Trouble with Spikol for posting the text), which offers a decent account of controversies around the practice.

Advocates for this approach--NAMI and the annoying E. Fuller Torrey--say that without forced medication some patients will commit violent acts and therefore they must take meds whether they like it or not. I am willing to accept that argument when applied to patients who have, as determined in a court of law, committed violent acts in the past and that those violent acts can be proven to be connected to said patients flying off their meds. If such patients wish to stay out of state hospitals and jail, then they should be participating in appropriate treatment--and requiring them to take meds seems a reasonable trade-off. But only under the above circumstances.

Other than that, forced medication is wrong and a violation of patient civil rights, especially that business about due process. Opponents such as the Bazelon Center say "No" to outpatient commitment altogether. I am on their side on this, principally because there is no proof that the mentally-ill commit acts of violence at a rate greater than the rest of the population (when they happen, the acts get massive media coverage as daily newspaper editors and television news directors are stupid like that). What's more, there's no proof that outpatient commitment works well, according to studies on the matter. And the meds that are forced on patients are typically antipsychotics--and I think everyone knows how I feel about those meds. Apply the Fuller Torrey logic to other classes of citizens: Should we tie all police officers' hands behind their backs when they go home because some of their colleagues commit domestic violence at a rate greater than other Americans? You know the answer to that.

If society is so convinced that the seriously psychotic among us are so, so dangerous, then get a court order and commit the patients in question to a hospital. And as for Fuller Torrey and NAMI, reread the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and, then, go to hell.