[blame_lewis]

> I am very hesitant to use this when a drug can be prescribed (with knowing bad side effects) can be applied. It can seriously mess someone's life up.

This is why it's so important to understand that psychiatric treatment must be a collaborative process. The prescribing physician is only making decisions with the consent of the patient, because the patient is the one who has to choose to actually take the medication anyway.

Those decisions are made based on the patient's description of their experience of the disease. A medication can only push you in a certain direction, and when trying to find the right direction, all the clinician has to go by is what the patient says they're experiencing.

If your psychiatrist is simply telling you what your problems are, and prescribing you medications without your say in anything, then what you are receiving is not treatment. And it will, as you say, seriously mess [your] life up.

[mercer]

My experience (and anecdotally the experience of many people I know) is that because a psychiatrist's proverbial hammer is medication, it's really important to either try other things first (like a psychologist who doesn't immediately send you to a psychiatrist) or to at least make sure you have sources of advice/expertise other than just a psychiatrist.

This is in The Netherlands, where AFAIK we're not particularly known for overprescribing medication, and our health care provides caregivers with enough funds to not go for the 'easy' pill solution right away. I imagine it's quite a bit more an acute risk in the US.

[nradov]

What about patients who present a serious risk of harm to themselves and others? Should they be medicated without consent? Sometimes the only other option is indefinite confinement in a mental facility.

[blame_lewis]

Asterisk. I meant in the long term. In the very short term, hospital can be an option, but asylums no longer exist in first-world nations.

Our treatment systems simply do not currently have an effective long-term way of handling patients that outright refuse to take their medication.

In practical terms, these days most people in that situation end up in prisons instead.