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Though there may be no advocacy groups led by patients who advocate for easier access to involuntary care, there are many individuals who assert that involuntary care helped them. The recognition that involuntary care is sometimes necessary seems to be more culturally accepted in Europe where some patients openly acknowledge being sectioned on their social media pages.

As pointed out by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, one reason you seldom hear from people who benefited from voluntary or involuntary care is because they move forward with their busy lives and careers. Those patients who advocate most strongly against involuntary care are not a representative sample of psychiatric patients—they overrepresent patients who have not responded well to treatment or have otherwise had a negative experience. The symptoms of their illnesses may even contribute to paranoia and anger about experiences they may recall inaccurately—my son used to speak positively about his involuntary care as a youth, but his story has become far more negative as his psychotic illness has worsened.. Opponents of involuntary care are also more likely than others to be unemployed or employed part-time due to the chronic nature of their illnesses, leaving more time for them to spend on advocacy.

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Great points. I don’t really find binary debates about the necessity of involuntary care very helpful. It’s necessary for some people and there is little point in denying that. There is however an important debate regarding the shape and form that involuntary care takes, the scope of it, the availability of alternatives to it, what can be done to reduce it, what can be done to make it more therapeutic, what can be done to address the concerns of those who have been traumatized, and whether involuntary care is being utilized in problematic ways (eg as a way of managing homelessness), etc. All of these are legitimate questions that we have not really taken seriously. I will have more to say about this in a post that I am working on.

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I fully agree. One thing to keep in mind, I think, is that persons who need involuntary treatment are a tiny fraction of those who receive psychiatric services. That being the case, it is easy for the civil liberty concerns of the vast majority who will never need involuntary care to quash the needs of a tiny minority who do.

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I find myself in near complete agreement with this NYT article.

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