[DanBC]

> My wife and I have had this discussion; Under what conditions would it be OK to forcefully administer psychiatric medicines?

That's a significant interference with a person's human rights, so it should be done as a measure of last resort, after all other options have been tried, and with a bunch of checks and measures built in. The person should pose an immediate risk of significant harm to themselves or to other people, and the person should lack capacity to make the choice. The people making the choice should be senior, experienced, and well trained.

And after it's happened there should be some kind of case review to see if it can be avoided in future.

For example, if the person became distressed to the point they are rapidly tranquilised the case review would look at behaviours of other people that created the distress.

[Natsu]

There are other things they can do to help compliance with treatment, like doctor-administered injections instead of pills. The thing is that even when people agree to treatment, they might forget their medicine and then be off in a psychotic episode and too detached from reality to take it.

I know this entirely too well because my mother was violently murdered by someone off their meds and the doctors managed to decide that nobody was at risk in spite of her telling them she feared for her life.

So I'd be more inclined to say that doctors have good reason to make sure people stay on their meds and to change treatments to ones where compliance can be better enforced whenever necessary.

[kefka]

In so not to edit posts and context, our talks were about the current shoveling of the mentally ill in the prison system instead of treatment.

There was a recent reddit article in /r/news that talked about a Hawaiian prison that screaming, throwing feces, and other illness had taken over as the makeup of the prison. In general, we have collectively decided that there will be no/little support for the mentally ill, and that the jails and prisons will be the tool to stop them.

With the side effects as they are, how ethical is it to imprison them? They are ill, and we do not generally charge people if a legitimate illness causes a crime (no mens rea). And with the side effects, how ethical is it to force (by court) the drugs that 'cure' them?