Christopher Gordon, a psychiatrist from Harvard, wrote an excellent letter to the editor of the New York Times inviting a discussion on the issue of forcing people into treatment. He says,
Recent tragic events have linked mental illness and violence. Some people — I, for one — consider this link dangerously stigmatizing. People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators.
He goes on to say that it’s very difficult to reliably predict whether a person will become violent but tragic events like the ones in Newtown or Virginia Tech increase the pressure placed on psychiatrists (and all mental healthcare workers, I need to add) to do just that.
This means that potentially violent people would need to be identified and, if they are not willing to comply with treatment recommendations, could be mandated to undergo at least medication therapy with antipsychotic drugs.
The problem, Dr. Gordon explains, is that we’ll get better results if the patient agrees to and cooperates with the treatment plan.
Still, if psychiatrists humbly try to understand the person on his or her own terms, do not dismiss the person’s experience as meaningless and truly respect the person’s choices about treatment, sometimes this opens the way to an effective treatment relationship. For some suffering and alienated people — certainly not all — feeling respectfully understood can be a critical step toward recovery.
In my experience, “feeling respectfully understood” is the primary step for healing. It’s woven into my work everyday, every session, with people with serious mental illness. I don’t think I would be a useful therapist without believing in the inherent goodness of and realistic possibilities for each person I see. How can marginalized, traumatized, stigmatized people overcome their obstacles to health in therapy with me if I don’t believe that even bad events can lead to good outcomes?
If I don’t take the time to really understand them, how can they trust me? How can I learn what gets in their way and help them navigate around or through those issues so they can live some semblance of a life “in the community”?
But isn’t it strange that this has to be said? Isn’t it what we all want from our doctors or caretakers…for them to take the time to listen to our concerns and be respectful about it?
Dr. Blue's Mid-life Musings 
This was a kind of weird article, esp the bits about suggesting that (our) clients be respectfully understood. Ummmm……… I heard that when I was 6.
Is he narcissistic or am I for suggesting/reacting that others should be human. What do you think? :))
Well, I figured that he has to say this stuff because people tend not to take psychotic people seriously, which is too bad. Just because a person is psychotic doesn’t mean s/he doesn’t know or can’t communicate the things that are important for his/her life. It seems that in light of the violence, “lay people” want to hospitalize or medicate people and the point of the discussion is to help them realize that the issues are more complicated than that; people with mental illness often have good reasons for refusing treatment, but with respect, understanding, and at times, savvy clinical skills, compromises can be found.