Reply to How can we strengthen our laws.to have severely mentally ill in the District committed?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, while life with untreated, severe mental illness is difficult, treating a mental illness is also difficult. Mood stabilizers can be toxic to major organs, like the kidneys. Many people do not feel physically or mentally well when they are medicated. They experience nausea, fatigue, weight gain, tremors, and other side effects. ECT is still one of the more effective last-line treatments we have for treatment-resistant depression, and it can permanently effect memory. People with treated severe mental illness can still qualify as disabled because their medication side effects and/or because their treatments are not entirely effective.

So, just as accepting any other medical treatment is a choice, accepting mental healthcare is a choice unless you are a threat to yourself or others. We define that threat in specific, short-term ways to avoid unnecessary institutionalizing the non-criminally ill. One is permitted to be homeless and/or jobless. One is permitted to damage relationships with their family members. These are difficult choices that are not easy to see, but they are options available to adults.

As a society we also have a history of violating the civil rights of the mentally ill. Through the 20th century we incarcerated people in psych wards where their conditions often deteriorated instead of improving. More than a few people who were confined against their wills were sent away because they were inconvenient to their families or deemed aberrant in one way in another, not because they had diagnoses that merited being institutionalized. The solution to this problem was legal reforms to make it very hard to repeat this pattern.

If you would really like to help people, push for more research into effective treatments for significantly impairing mental illnesses. Then push for affordable healthcare for all so that everyone is able to access medication and therapy regardless of their wealth and employment status. [/quote]

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