[carewell]

Do you completely refuse to accept that there is such a phenomenon as mental illness? If you are of a sound mind and want to starve to death - have it your way. If you are a schizophrenic lying face down on the street - there is something we can do to help you. It's possible with the help of modern medicine to give you a decent life, restore your function.

What is this theoretical individual losing if we help them? What is the society losing if we act to help?

[notch656a]

The dictator part in me, if given the ability, would wave a magic wand and make these individuals 100% neurotypical for 24 hours. At the end of the time, I would ask them if they want to (1) wave the wand again and stay this way as long as they like (2) Go back to their <diagnosed disease> self or (3) commit suicide. I don't know what the answer would be, but I imagine the vast majority would pick (1), a few would pick (2) and a few would pick (3). From that point on, I would defer their suicide decisions to themselves.

Sadly that is not the reality we live in. The dictator, in this case is New York and various government entities. A government notorious for putting mentally ill in wards where people are "living in filth and dirt, their clothing in rags, in rooms less comfortable and cheerful than the cages in which we put animals in a zoo." [0] Without magic wands, the doctors are not always returning them to neurotypical condition, but rather often some other, perhaps clinically more palatable often drug-induced different mental state. There is often no neurotypical state the wand can be waved to, and often the decision for suicide overlaps between "ill" ad not ill persons particularly when they're subjected to indefinite stays in facilities under conditions of sexual abuse such as historically found in New York mental wards. Hell I might argue it may be cruel to stop someone from committing suicide to avoid being "helped" by New York.

That is, we are dealing with gritty, dirty reality where the mentally ill entity that is the state of New York, itself unqualified in its mental facilities, has a history of sexually and physically abusing people [0, but that's not all] to "protect" them from their own mental illness/suicide etc. Even if the consent argument fails on merits (I disagree), I argue the decision cannot and should not rest on the state in non-criminal concerns of imposing force on the ill (and notwithstanding the dystopic notion of government entities choosing who meets often poorly defined mental diseases).

With the state totally unqualified, and the individual on his own on the street often with family far removed, I defer to his perhaps ill consent. Notwithstanding, of course all help that can be offered should be.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willowbrook_State_School