Schizophrenia, Violence, And Forced Treatment

There was an ironic intersection of various forces in the mental health world yesterday.

Fuller Torrey's Treatment Advocacy Center had a post trumpeting new forced treatment laws in Illinois, Louisiana and Idaho and the group made its usual argument that forced treatment for people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder is a social good. "Progress" even. That's a dubious claim, since there are folks who are fully compliant with their meds who still go off and do crazy, regrettable things. In some cases, it's pretty clear that the meds may be intimately connected with the behavior and, of course, sometimes they aren't. The good folks at TAC will never be interested in having that sort of subtle conversation, however, because they are led by Fuller Torrey and he's a well-known "prophet." Or lying fearmonger, if you prefer.

Separately, Alaska attorney Jim Gottstein, who also heads the anti-forced treatment group Psych Rights, sent around an email letting people know that a very unique case he's working on in Alaska is marching forward in that state's supreme court (no link to offer). The basic story is that a man in that state is fighting the state's ability to force him to take antipsychotics in the state hospital and Gottstein has managed to stop the state for the time being from being able to force the man to take meds that the state cannot prove don't harm him. The court is going to hear more motions on this case soon. Like I said, this is a very unique case and you can read the various filings here.

Meanwhile, yet another paper from the unending CATIE study came out in the British Journal of Psychiatry yesterday. It examined the question of whether first or second generation antipsychotics work better at preventing violence occasionally associated with schizophrenia. I've not seen the full paper yet, so I can't get into how researchers measured "violence," but I can pass along the news that the new meds didn't outperform the old. I'll have more from the study when I see the entire paper.

Like I said, it's ironic that all of that popped up within hours of each other.