Forced Treatment: How Far Should We Go?
I’ve been thinking a good bit this weekend about the issue of “forcing” treatment upon mentally ill people, particularly those who are in immediate and ongoing danger of being hurt by their illness, or at risk of causing others to be hurt. OK, I confess–“Grizzly Man” is playing on cable this weekend, and Treadwell‘s story rips at my heart, because when you watch the footage of him, he is so obviously ill. Brilliant, creative, with a big heart…but sick. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and other things, but always refused treatment, and, I feel, ultimately died as a result of that refusal.
Have you heard or read about “Kendra’s Law?” If not, go check out this story, and see what you think. I’m really interested in hearing others’ thoughts on this topic. When I hear the term “forced treatment,” my mind immediately conjures up images from Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest”, and Jack Nicholson’s consequent film portrayal of its main character, who has “treatment” forced on him right up through lobotomy. But from what I can see right now, it apears that the goal of Kendra’s Law is just about the opposite of the nightmare created in”Cuckoo’s Nest.” It’s not about institutionalizing people, locking them up and keeping them in chemical straitjackets. It seems to seek to help people live connected, fulfilling, and maybe ironically, independent lives.
Consider the very nature of disorders like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia…they deny their own existence. That is actually a diagnostic criteria sometimes, which boggles my mind: “Oh, you don’t think you’re sick? Well, that PROVES you are.” Yikes! But in bipolar support groups, I have seen more heartache than I can stand to reflect on much, coming simply from the sick person’s lack of insight. I don’t really even like that term, “insight,” because it implies something you can choose to have, and for many mentally ill people, that choice just does not exist without medication. And to complete the catch-22, without insight, medication is never going to be chosen. So there you are, stuck in a truly vicious cycle. I’m not talking about people who don’t like meds, resent having to take meds, etc. I mean the greater-than-80% of affected people who cannot recognize that they have an illness. If you could, somehow, get proper medication into these people, then they would be able to achieve the insight they would need to recognize the need for the medication…see the problem, here?
So, what say you all? At what point do we have the right to step in and mandate that someone else take medication–of any kind? Do we wait until they’re harming themselves and/or others? That seems to be what happens currently, and results in involuntary commitments…what if we could get to the problem and treat it before someone had to crash hard, possibly taking other people down with them? And at what point do “we” step in? I’m wondering how you get a diagnosis on someone who is totally non-compliant in the first place. Seems like someone would have to have run up against “the system” at least once, resulting in, at the very minimum, a 72-hour hold, in order to be diagnosed with a mental illness. I can easily see a “slippery slope” argument here, too. If we can mandate treatment for one thing, then why not another, and another, until we’ve reached Brave New World status?
But then, I see so many people homeless, sick, miserable, addicted to drugs and/or alcohol, having lost everything…when just straightening out some brain chemistry might have given them completely different lives, if only.
It’s a good topic for discussion, and I’m going to be doing some more research into Kendra’s Law, to try and figure out the details. I don’t know what kind of “teeth” it has, or what the consequences are for non-compliance, or what criteria must be met to have it put into play. I thank God regularly that my husband is one of the “lucky” ones (Yeah, I know–funny, huh? Ha, ha.) who doesn’t have any compliance issues…but you know what? When he was undiagnosed, unmedicated, and unstable? He didn’t HAVE any insight, wasn’t capable of recognizing his illness. He had to first “hit bottom,” and be involuntarily hospitalized and medicated first. Even then, he was not initially treated correctly in the beginning, and suffered a relapse, and yet another involuntary hospitalization. That was the one that saved his life, and he’s been pretty stable for almost 4 years now. And I have to ask myself, is what he went through back then really that different from what Kendra’s Law proposes? The only real difference I can see is that once my husband was released from the hospital, there was nothing in place to ensure that he kept taking his meds–he was free to get off them and start cycling again at any time, as he is now. Fortunately, he doesn’t misinterpret “feeling better” with “being well.” But he’s not in the majority there.
If you have someone in your life who suffers from a mental illness, but who can’t recognize that fact, and it drives you to distraction, there are two sources I strongly recommend, both from Dr. Xavier Amador. One is his fantastic book, “I Am Not Sick; I Don’t Need Help,” and the other is this amazing lecture on the topic of anosognosia (lack of insight). This video can honestly change the way you look at mental illness, and in my opinion, applies in good measure to addiction, as well. Amador is inspirational, and speaks not only as a healthcare professional, but as the loving brother of a schizophrenic who refuses treatment. Do yourself a favor and block off a couple hours of time to view this lecture. Heck, even if you have to view it in 15-minute chunks here and there, it is SO worth your time.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
It’s something I think about all the time. Assuming the lack of abusive treaters, as you’ve said, there’s still the risk of incorrect diagnosis. But there is so much weighing down the “on the other hand.” It’s something I’m grappling with now with my own mom. Thanks for the thought-provocation.
December 30th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I don’t know the answers but I’m glad that you’re asking the questions.
December 30th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
“If you could, somehow, get proper medication into these people, then they would be able to achieve the insight they would need to recognize the need for the medication”
Sorry, but these are the very people that, once meds kick in, they declare they are cured and no longer need meds.
There is a whole delicate mindset about taking care of one’s self. I think it foils the self-destruction of an addictive personality. They think it feels good/most comfortable feeling bad.
What I really dislike and need to write an essay on is when people use a mental illness against me, a stable and regulated person, because it is convenient to blame mental illness on me if I am daring to disagree with them. It has taken me years to own my emotions, whereas I used to hold my tongue, not knowing if what I was saying was me or BPD. Now I know and truly resent when I am not allowed to discuss an opinion unpopular to someone else. “Go take a pill,” my ex hub used to say if I disagreed with him.
Funny, the people around me are more warped, but the blame is heaped on me. This parallels “don’t know you’re sick, well, then you must be,” but that negates the possibiliity that sometimes I really am right! Especially after a decade of therapy! I have done the work that many “sane” people should take the time to do. Everybody has something.
Sorry about this becoming an essay!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:07 am
Cricket, you’re correct–I should have added “and keep taking them” into that equation, because what you describe is precisely what happens (I just brushed on that aspect of it elsewhere in the post).
And OH. MY. GOSH. Someone saying “take a pill” to you gives you every right to be blinking furious. I can see why he’s an “ex.”
There are times when I think, about my husband, “he’s only acting this way because he’s cycling,” and usually that’s the case, but I’d like to think that I usually respond with some degree of sensitivity. And it has never occurred to me to think of BPD making his opinion or point-of-view about anything less valid!
December 31st, 2007 at 12:22 am
As someone who was misdiagnosed at one point, this prospect terrifies me.
It was very hard to get out from under the misdiagnosis and get help for the actual issue I had.
The fact that drugs for one disorder can actually *worsen* other disorders has the potential to be devastating when taken in context with “forced” help.
I’m terribly opposed to anything that reeks of ‘nanny state’ to me.
You asked “So, what say you all? At what point do we have the right to step in and mandate that someone else take medication–of any kind?”
For me, the point only occurs when they present a danger to *others* not to themselves.
Forced medication would’ve robbed us of many artistic geniuses throughout the centuries – such as Van Gogh.
I do agree with wanting to help – I don’t agree with forcing someone to accept it.
:(
But this is a very well thought out, well written post.
December 31st, 2007 at 12:31 am
As I sat here last night watching Grizzly Man, I was thinking; “why didn’t someone stop him”.
Then I thought about all of the times people thought the same about me.
I wonder if I would be med compliant if it had been forced on me.
I wonder if I would have gotten help sooner if it had been forced on me.
I wonder if I could force it on someone else.
I have no idea what the right answer is. But knowing this is an option that exists makes me think maybe it could help someone.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:06 am
yndygo – my husband was misdiagnosed for nearly two decades, and WAS given meds that made him worse. At the time he was hospitalized the first time, he was taking prescribed Zoloft…and it was making him NUTS. “Manic” is not a strong enough word. So yeah, I think that’s a valid concern. I don’t know the details of Kendra’s Law (and it’s already been passed in at least one state), but I’d hope that it at *least* requires a consensus of several doctors, and also that it can be challenged.
I understand your point about “only when they’re a danger to others,” too, but at the same time, I can’t help but think that I would commit my darling husband in a HEARTBEAT if it was to keep him from hurting or killing himself…and what if it was my child?
That brings up an interesting point–which is worse, involuntary treatment/medication, or involuntary commitment, which is what we have now in extreme cases?
I’m also not sure that stability would have robbed us of the our great creative geniuses throughout history who are now suspected of having been bipolar. There’s no way to know, but what if they could’ve done MORE if they could have been stable? It’s certainly one possibility.
Mandy – Girl, I don’t know. This whole dilemma is just one series of “what if” questions after another, and no one has all the answers for anyone else, that’s for sure.
If anyone reading this has not read the books “The Bipolar Advantage” and “The Depression Advantage,” by Tom Wooten, I recommend them. I’m going to try to review them here soon.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:41 am
I battle this question(s) every single day. My 15 year old cousin is showing severe signs of Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar. My grandmother’s mother seems to have had it, my mother had it, and now this cousin.
She has left home, is living in a drughouse with her 18 year old boyfriend, is violent to the point of knocking my 26 year old female cousin out with a glass mug. She skips school, swears at everyone, yelling, screaming, and at times is docile, shy and sweet.
There are rumors flying through her small town that she has been promiscuous and involved in sexual experimentation with more than one person at a time, been filmed, and possibly took money for favors.
Her parents (my uncle is the brother to my mother) have gotten her an appointment with a psychiatrist at a high financial cost and just tonight, she agreed to go. Here (we aren’t in the states) there are no laws to force anyone of any age into treatment. Even despite my cousin having hurt family members and completely outlining to her sisters how she is going to kill them in their sleep – detail by chilling detail.
We tiptoed around her at Christmas, with my grandmother agreeing to send food with her to the boyfriend’s drug house, just to avoid an eruption. Had she said no, we are certain this cousin would have gone crazy for not getting her way.
Everyone in the family is terrified of what she will do if her parents force her to give up the boyfriend and come home. She is a time bomb at all times.
If she hadn’t agreed to see this professional, I really don’t know what my uncle and aunt would have done. I do hope she gets the help she really needs, which will include therapy and drugs, probably for the rest of her life.
Sorry to write a novel here – I planned on writing about her at a later date, but this seems appropriate and I completely can relate to the battle of forced therapy vs. not.
This debate about forced therapy has to come with a guarantee of proper, diligent care, and unfortunately in 2007, we simply do not have all the right answers for every person that requires said help – even for those who are willing participants.
Belinda, I often look to your insight for help on this topic, for myself, for my cousin and for answers on the history of my mother. Thank you for always sharing with this community with such honesty and candor. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:44 am
I meant to add she is the youngest of 4 daughters – this isn’t teen angst – we all know what that is – it’s clearly, most certainly, 100% Borderline Personality and possibly Bi-polar. BPD isn’t often alone.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:47 am
Because the bipolar person in my immediate life is still a minor, I do make decisions for him all the time, including medications. My son, who is 15, isn’t necessarily easy to treat because so many meds don’t work or stop working and we’re constantly tweaking them. At one people I lost track of his med regime and started trusting him. BIG mistake. He slowly but surely stopped taking his meds, and this led to several hospitalizations. Now I dole them out again, he’s much better and more easily dealt with, and I have a plan to continue doling out his meds for a long long time.
My mother, an untreated bipolar, should have been treated but she refused and nobody forced her. That was, imo, a HUGE mistake as she was parenting many children and basically screwed them up so severely it’s a wonder they are all still alive.
Treatment is different now than it was during the institutionalization era, and people don’t get to rot away in hospitals anymore. They’re in, treated, stableized and then kicked out. Most hospitalizations last under two weeks, according to our pdoc. So I don’t see forcing an adult who is not stable and not med compliant into the hospital to become stable. Once they are able to determine what stability feels like, many will choose to remain on meds. Not all, but many will.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:50 am
Oh and one more thing – I WAS initially misdiagnosed with Bipolar. My therapist, who I insisted on speaking to before agreeing to any drugs, recently came to the conclusion that I have PTSD. Much different – and certainly treated differently!
December 31st, 2007 at 2:14 am
Blue – I can’t imagine. You’re right, if that situation was happening here, we’d have that child in the hospital and treated, like it or not. For your family’s sake, I’m hoping for more bipolar and less borderline in the diagnosis, because the former is treatable and the latter, sadly, really isn’t, at least not with appreciable success. And “borderline” has become kind of a psychiatric catch-all term in many cases of treatment-resistant bipolar disorder.
The situation you describe is so familiar, and so sad. You have someone who is not in their “right mind,” to use a colloquialism, holding an entire family captive, through bullying and fear. If it were an adult doing it, it would be simple enough to say, “Hey, cut ’em loose, set your own boundaries and consequences, and stick to it. Detach!” But how agonizing when it’s your own precious CHILD, your BABY, you’re talking about. I don’t know how parents do it, and I hope I never have to find out first-hand. I hope your family members are doing whatever they can, at any opportunity, to take care of *themselves*. It’s like that worn out old airplane oxygen-mask analogy: you can’t help someone else unless you help yourself first. You and yours are in my prayers.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:18 am
margalit – echoing what I said above, I feel for and respect parents who are dealing with this. It’s good that you have a child who, ultimately, abides by your rules when it’s put to him in black and white. The additional strain of handling all this alone just blows my mind. My bipolar significant other is a spouse, an adult, but I rely on a huge support network of family–his and mine.
Making the sign of the evil eye, spitting, and praying that this is something my own daughter can avoid.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:25 am
This was a very timely post, as yet again, my mother and I have been discussing her brother. He has never been properly diagnosed, and has never really complied with any meds he’s been prescribed. He doesn’t give the meds a chance, and then he can dismiss them as useless or not working. He’s been hospitalized three times in the past two years but hasn’t pursued any follow-up care as advised by the drs. He calls his sisters to complain, expects them to somehow solve his problems, but doesn’t take any actions on his own behalf. It is heartbreaking, and on the other hand, infuriating and annoying. They are emotionally invested, but he is not it seems. And they’ll go through so much, only to end up in the same place a few months down the road.
I absolutely understand Cricket’s concerns, and yet I have such a pit in my stomach knowing that he may end up back in the hospital soon, only to be streeted because he’s not at risk of harming himself or others. He has an apartment, is on soc sec disability, and somehow maintains the appearance of functioning. His life is no life to have. I don’t think he fits the profile that dr.amador paints (tho I’m only half-way through the video), I don’t think he’s got bp or schizophrenia, but he’s clearly in pain, doesn’t function as most adults do and never has. I think he’d benefit tremendously from a longer hospital stay, which is of course impossible in today’s managed care situation- stabilize ’em and street ’em. It stinks. There’s no real way to *help* him.
December 31st, 2007 at 10:43 am
I read about Kendra’s law this morning and thought how much it may have helped my daughter and perhaps still will. Normally, this type of governmental intervention would make me shudder but I am losing my daughter every minute of every day, and since she is no longer a minor I have no recourse.
If this worked and gave her back to all of us, and to her son, I would rejoice. She remains, undiagnosed, or multiply diagnosed, addicted, and unmedicated. She is working, but has no home, car and no insight.
Nearly every day I expect a call telling me she is dead. I struggle to explain to her son why he doesn’t live with her.
I want my daughter back.
December 31st, 2007 at 12:08 pm
My son is severely bipolar and didn’t even accept the idea until he was 32 years old. By then he was so into street drugs that he was positive that those drugs were helping him more than anything the doctors could give him and they were cheaper!! He is currently serving a four year sentence for Meth. The really sad part of this is that he is now drug free and if the state would try and prescribe the right drugs for my son and all the others like him while they are incarcerated, maybe they would realize what the right drugs could do, and remain on the correct ones when they are released. But sadly if they are treated for a mental illness while in prison they are targeted by other inmates.If the state of Indiana had a Kendra’s Law maybe there would be fewer young people in prison, and it would be so much cheaper for the state to help with drug cost that to incarcerate them. I was unable as a mother to convince my son to get help, but with the state’s help maybe another mother could. I don’t like where he is but at least for the time being he is warm, fed, and still alive. Belinda your article is right on the mark, keep on trying to get the message out. Someday maybe the right people will listen. I thank you for your feelings.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:50 pm
I have to say that when I was sixteen and I was experiencing what I used to refer to as my “nervous breakdown” (until my therapist a few years ago said I was most likely have dissociative episodes and in process of fracturing- ) I used to wish to god that someone in charge (like my parents) would send me to a psychiatric hospital to get help. I was so scared of what what happening in my head and I wanted help but unfortunately my mom was busy waiting for aliens to pick her up and take her home and my dad never noticed anything that might have been inconvenient to himself. It didn’t occur to me to seek professional help on my own, I had no health care and no other adults in my life to help me.
In my circumstance it would have been a very positive thing if someone had intervened on my behalf and got me help. Though, as I write this I’m realizing that I’m not the people you’re talking about because I would have accepted the help.
My mom though, is a person who I wish I could have forced to get help a long time ago. She used to tell me when I was a kid that she thought us kids would be better off without her being alive. She has shown all the classic signs of bipolar disorder (the manic phases in which she believed herself to be almost superhuman and during which she would spend money like she was an heiress and then crash all the way down to the suicide talk) and has consistently used me as her therapist instead of getting proper help and meds. She finally did get a diagnosis and it wasn’t bipolar which shocked me. She claims meds don’t help her even though I saw a huge improvement in her.
What’s really ironic? She’s getting her license as a therapist.
January 1st, 2008 at 6:38 pm
My heart goes out to Blue and especially to her aunt and uncle. One of the reasons BPD is so devastating to families is because it doesn’t always “look” like mental illness–it just looks like a manipulative, selfish person who makes terrible life choices. My sister, who was diagnosed with BPD when she was a teenager and is probably also bipolar, has never had treatment as an adult. This is because she doesn’t believe she has any mental illness at all, all evidenct to the contrary. Right now, she is dying of cancer; she has, at most, a month left. She will leave behind two children and an ex-husband who have been traumatized and financially ruined by her mental illness.
My sister loves her children, but her BPD has caused her to ruin their childhoods and damage their psyches. As she struggles with her impending death, she is verbalizing that she finally realizes how many mistakes she has made in her life, and how she has damaged her boys. She still does not realize she is, and has been, mentally ill. Because she is an extremely bright woman, she was able to fool a lot of mental health professionals. If her family had been allowed to be represented in the system when she was evaluated, I believe things would have been very different.
I understand all the slippery slope arguments, and they are very real and must be dealt with seriously, but lives are ruined by non-treatment. “A danger to others” can mean many things, not just physical violence. My sister has been a danger to her children their whole lives; now that they are 14 and 17 it is hard to see how they will recover from this damage.
Thanks for tackling this complicated issue.
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:47 am
My aunt is schizoaffective/severly bipolar who became violent when off her meds. She had been living with my grandmother while on her meds. for 10 years with occasional periods of going off her meds and going wildly manic. The last time, she began threatening my grandmother and insisting that my late grandfather meant to leave the house to her. She started saying dark things about my grandma and we were beginning to fear for her safety. The last manic event culminated in her speeding the wrong way down the highway, getting arrested and being sent back to the veteran’s hospital for an acute episode. The V.A. cannot do continued treatment, just stabilzation and she couldn’t continue living with my grandma. Her sons “signed her over” to the state and she has been living in a supervised home ever since (it has been 3 years). She is mostly happy at her home and there is no way my Grandma could have taken care of her as her own health has declined. Her sons were not willing to let her live with them as some felt she was a danger to their own children (it came out that she had been physically abusive to her youngest children. this had been hidden from the extended family at the time, when her symptoms began to manifest.) If she had not been “committed”, she would be living on the street, dead or in jail. I don’t think her life is ideal but I don’t know what choice would have been better. She wasn’t always non-compliant but the episodes of her going off her meds and causing significant emotional, financial and physical damage to herself and others increased over the years. It was and is a very painful, terrible situation and I’m not sure what the ideal answer is.
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm
These stories are all DEEPLY touching my heart, and I thank every one of you for sharing them. I know that there is a mindset that happens in some long-term relationships with untreated mentally ill people, in which the “caretaker” wishes they could just put their loved one “away” somewhere–in a box on a shelf, in a soundproof room, or more realistically, in a hospital or possibly even jail cell–until the storms pass and they have their “real” personality back again. But I honestly believe that most of us choose to fight for our loved ones’ stability and autonomy, so that they can be really present in their relationships.
I’ve even been accused of that kind of thinking by my husband: “You’d like to just lock me away somewhere until this passes, wouldn’t you?” And if I’m being honest, I have to admit that sometimes, when things were really bad, the answer was a quietly angry, “Yes.” But usually, the answer is, “No, I want to help this pass NOW.”
January 11th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Sorry I’m really quite late to this post….could have used a bit of forced treatment myself recently….
I like the idea of an outpatient monitoring system, very much. I was committed to inpatient once, the only time I’ve been in hospital, at a time where I was incapable of making any rational decisions…..talk about nuts. I happened to luck out and get a doctor who refused to let me slip through the cracks. He also wouldn’t release me from hospital for 2 months….his attempt to ensure that I really was ok, and that I wouldn’t be returning. Once he did, he took it upon himself to monitor me extremely closely, with every intention of committing me inpatient again if need be, assigning me a caseworker, and the two of them working together. Not really law, just a good caring doctor. I am grateful for the whole experience. Knowing that I wanted to be ok, coupled with the fear and thought of returning to the hospital worked well. I know that if it is that sort of a person who would be in charge of such a program, then great good would come of it. I suppose, like anything that humans are involved in, there could also be great harm. But based on my experience with something similiar, I’m all for it.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Oh boy…this is my first trip over here and finding this post with what we’re going through right now is just…meant to be I guess.
Monday morning at 5am my mom left her home, and a weird note on the counter. By 5pm, my stepdad was calling me to see if I’d heard from her and told me that she hadn’t been sleeping, read me the note and said he hadn’t been able to reach her all day. I called her cell phone repeatedly and it would ring but go to voice mail because she wasn’t picking up.
By 8pm the police were involved, thankfully they didn’t make us wait the 24 hours to file a missing persons report. At 2pm a detective showed up to my parents’ house to tell us they’d found her truck, but not her. My brother, stepdad and I were up all night worrying about her. Pulling up phone records, asking the cell company to ping her cell, all until we knew they had her truck with her cell phone still in it.
There was a search and rescue team dispatched at daylight, who after a couple of hours determined by dredging the river that she wasn’t IN it, nor was she in the park where they found her truck. While they were packing up their equipment, a woman approached them and asked if they were looking for someone named Lynda because she’d met her in the park and helped her check into a hotel the night before.
The police determined that she had been in the hotel but had checked out that morning. My stepdad stayed home in case she called, and I jumped in my car to join the search efforts through the streets near the hotel. As I was driving my stepdad called and said that she’d called and promised she’d wait where she was, and gave me the address. I was 5 minutes away.
When I pulled up, she was standing in the pouring rain by the road. She didn’t recognize my car. She was lucid enough to try to get home, and walked 12 miles in the attempt to get there before she was too exhausted to keep going. She was lucid enough to call home, and to wait to be picked up. She did recognize me when I approached her and hugged me so tight, but sobbed uncontrollably. When I talked her into getting in the car, she also agreed to let me take her to the hospital. She didn’t speak all the way there. She went from letting me hold her hand, to not wanting me to touch her and pushing me away. At the hospital, she became catatonic in the ER.
When the state whoeverheis came in 7 hours later, he said she was being involuntarily committed, as she’d tried to leave again and was very agitated. He tried to talk to her and she refused. But she refused meds, and could do so on the 5150 hold. By Thursday the state removed her right to refuse meds. My father, brother and I were totally supportive of that. Up until her first dose of meds, she was catatonic and refused to look at us or let us near her. My mom hugged me every single day of my life that I saw her. I can’t begin to explain how painful all of this is. My mom has never exhibitted any symptoms that I know of, indicating any mental illness. I suffer and am medicated for depression. If the state hadn’t taken away her right to refuse meds, I believe that she would still be catatonic, pacing in front of a window in the psych ward. As of today, she’s talking and hugging, but still very confused and delusional.
I guess my point was 1) to get that off my chest because it is so very stressful and difficult. 2) to say that I support (in my mom’s case) the state insisting that she start meds at least long enough to pull her out of the catatonic state.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
[…] treatment upon mentally ill people, particularly those who are in immediate and ongoing danger of behttp://realmental.org/blog/archives/172Put patients in care, not in jail The Globe and MailWhy do our encounters with those suffering from […]