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> Which people? "Mentally ill" people aren't a homogenous group, and the fact that someone is mentally ill and living on the street does not imply that they are incompetent to make personal decisions due to their mental illness. The relation between mental illness, poverty, physical illness, etc. is complex. I was referring to patients who lack control over their mental faculties at least to the degree of the man on which the article was written. > There aren't simple answers, and this person isn't these people. Yes, this person belongs to the general collective I described above. Clearly when I said "these people" I meant people like the man in the article I was talking about. > Or was he, as he seemed, competent -- but voluntarily decided to discontinue the medication? He may have been in the driving seat when he hypothetically decided to stop taking medication, but ultimately he lost control of the wheel. If a person is not taking care of themself and so out of your wits that you stand for hours at road junctions staring blankly forward, they need to be saved. The authorities must assume that though the decision to stop taking medication was voluntary, because the person lost control of their mind, maybe that person's decision was misinformed (or as you suggest, accidental). By analogy, ust because the driver of a car intentionally didn't buckle themselves in (maybe they wanted to die, or like the risk, or were just eccentric), doesn't mean that when they crash and their body flies out, that we shouldn't hospitalise them. > And that's great, but its a mistake to project what you think you would want onto other people as their preferences. Actually there is no mistake here: it's a fact that there are other people like me who want this protection from the state. |