Forced treatment is a hot topic across the country right now. In New York City the Mayor gave the police broad powers to detain someone and force them into treatment if the officer says they need it. How is a police officer qualified to make that determination, and again we have a 1st Amendment right to express ourselves how we se fit. In California the CARE Courts are doing something very similar too.
My position on forced treatment is FUCK forced treatment. If I were to hold you down and force anything up you, the person reading this, would you actually accept what I have done and be okay with it or would you be traumatized by the it? You can not force human behavior to change, the change must come from within the person when they are ready and only when they are ready. If a family wants their precious disabled outcast to get treatment and they refusing to do so, who wins? Well according to the Constitution and the Patient Bill of Rights, the disabled outcast should win. Everyone one of us is entitled to accept or refuse treatment that aligns with our beliefs. It is that simple.
I propose that rather than force people into a system that is treating human beings like a commodity with dollar signs attached to them for each medication they take, that we start funding other evidence based therapies and promoting them to everyone, especially the courts. The Courts need to get away from the blanket approach of forced medication and educate themselves on these therapies and start opening their minds up to new approaches.
I ask if you are reading this and you have ever been forced into any sort of treatment that you fill out the contact form and share our story with me. At the end of the day we are all a human being, not dollar signs.
Sincerely,
Mikey