[EMM_386]

> All the while I can drive 15 min and find thousands of obviously mentally ill people in need of involuntary mental health treatment. because their only avenue for detaining them is to wait until they catch them committing a crime.

Let's say you were wandering the streets of a major city, looking very odd to everyone else and muttering to yourself (likely someone you'd see on a drive who is "obviously mentally ill"), but otherwise very happy and not breaking any laws, would you want the police to be able to snatch you off the street and involuntarily lock you away?

Likely not, and this is why the laws in some countries like the US are the way they are.

[lotsofpulp]

> but otherwise very happy and not breaking any laws

This is obviously not the case with a sizable portion of the people wandering the streets. An ideal world is nice to theorize, but practically, there will always be type 1 and type 2 errors.

Transparency and other efforts to reduce them should of course be a never ending goal, but abandoning a problem completely because it cannot be done perfectly is not a long term solution either.

> Likely not, and this is why the laws in some countries like the US are the way they are.

I think the laws are the way they are because it was cheaper to simply dismantle whatever existed of the mental health care system rather than invest in improving it. And it is still cheaper to ignore it on the federal level while the rich people cloister themselves in affluent suburbs and gated communities.

[EMM_386]

> This is obviously not the case with a sizable portion of the people wandering the streets.

I'll bite.

Give me an example of someone who fits your definition of someone who should be forcibly taken under the wing of mental health treatment (whatever that entails) who isn't breaking any laws. Putting someone into a mental institution strips of them of all rights and requires convincing a judge to ever get out.

This logic essentially wants to "arrest" people without "arresting" them because they aren't doing anything illegal. That requires a very precise definition of the conditions under which you can do this.

Very much like a law.

[lotsofpulp]

> Give me an example of someone who fits your definition of someone who should be forcibly taken under the wing of mental health treatment (whatever that entails) who isn't breaking any laws.

I did not suggest involuntary committal for those not breaking laws. I wrote a sizable portion of those who need mental health treatment are breaking laws (more importantly, they are behaving in a manner that is destructive to other members of society - littering, biological hazards, fire hazards, property crime, etc). Whether it be for schizophrenia, meth and drug addiction, or some combination thereof that make involuntary mental health treatment the only option.