Outpatient Commitment Is About Money, Not Public Safety or “Caring Coercion”

Proponents of outpatient commitment (forced drugging and so called “treatment” in their own homes of folks labelled with psychiatric diagnoses) usually use one of two arguments or both to persuade others that it is a good idea.  The argument most often used by E. Fuller Torrey and his Treatment Advocacy Center is that people with mental illness are dangerous ticking time bombs if not force medicated in their own homes who will kill you or your child or your sister on the street if you don’t pass laws to force drugs down their throats NOW!  The argument others use and that the Treatment Advocacy Center also uses sometimes is that not forcing psychiatric drugging and “treatment” on people in their own homes is tantamount to neglect and shows a lack of caring or concern for people with mental illness.  And if the drugs didn’t shorten lives by 25 years and actually worked as they claim rather than by causing brain damage and if we as a society had decided that we were going to force drug everyone with an illness in their own home if they didn’t take medicine voluntarily, well I”d move to another country but they might have more of an argument than they do now. 

But the fact is the push for outpatient commitment in Virginia and elsewhere is not about public safety nor about “caring coercion”.  It is all about money.  Money that taxpayers and legislators and Governors do not want to spend on mental health services in the community but will have to spend if legislation is passed that makes it even easier to force a citizen of Virginia into forced outpatient “treatment”.  Once there is a court order mandating treatment, there is no way out for the legislators and the Governor.  The money will have to be found to “treat” (force drug and monitor) each and every person ordered into outpatient commitment in Virginia.  If the psychiatrists to prescribe aren’t there they will have to be hired and if there is no money in the state pharmacy to pay for the drugs it will have to be found because otherwise state employees and their bosses will find themselves in contempt of court.  Of course the money for outpatient forced treatment will only be forced out of the legislature and the Governor after every last bit of money for voluntary mental health services in the community has been squeezed out of Community Service Board budgets and there is no more voluntary care left in the state for those dependent on the public system of mental health if we can even call it a system.  But no matter right?  It’s not as if self-determination, empowerment, choice, recovery or resilience are part of the Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse’s Mission statement and Vision and Comprehensive Plan and Transformation plan and Olmstead Plan or anything….oh wait, they are.

Talk the talk.  Walk the walk.  You can do it.  We can do it.  Yes we can.