[SoEnchanting]

Originally Posted by AKA_Monet

A person not inflicting harm on others or him/herself cannot be legally "forced" into treatment. In fact, it is against the law to do place them in "hospital" (sanitarium). They have to be willing to go and sign themselves in for treatment. Now, if they get arrested, usually for hurting someone or him/herself, they can be placed in the psych ward. If they accept treatment options, and rarely they do, they let them out at a defined period of time.

The second issue is I do not want any law enforcement official diagnosing anyone. That is NOT their job, nor in their contracts. Of course, they do make a call whether to simply arrest for criminality vs. psychotic behavior. But, I can tell you, many cops do NOT want the make the diagnosis. Only a trained healthcare professional should make that determination. And I also know that psych evaluation is a high stress job and the money is not that great to give full effort into it...

A psychologist or psychiatrist has it rather nicely, but the length in time to be trained is what deters people from pursuing those positions. They have to be dedicated. Same with a Social Worker (license clinical and/or Masters level) and with them they suffer burn out relatively easily.

One can only go as far as the patient is willing to let them go...

Sadly, the onus is on the patient with these particular diseases: There is no overt pathology, there is not a blood diagnostic test, there is barely a DNA microarray on the illness and the drugs have severe side-effects that does not directly affect the target organ and moreover takes 2-3 weeks for quasi-stability with short pharmakinetics of ~6 hours... Who would want to be a drooling, headachy, dud for 12 hours out the day when alcohol and weed are cheaper?

I was about to respond here and say that you can in fact hospitalize someone with a mental illness involuntarily, but then I went online and found out the Baker Act is only a Florida statute and not everywhere! Guess you learn something every day...