re: #14 KerFuFFler

But what happens when the mentally ill person is so far gone around the bend that they are in no position to make responsible personal healthcare decisions? Sure, there need to be safeguards protecting people with mild disorders from governmental intrusion, but at this point it has become too difficult to step in when someone clearly needs help.

The standard of someone having to pose a threat to one’s self or others before treatment is mandated lets too many people through the cracks. While that policy on the surface seems to be about protecting the rights of the mentally ill, I suspect that public unwillingness to pay for the care of mentally ill people is what it really comes down to.

By that standard I’d be in jail. I was, until I got treated, in no position to make a rational decision. If I’d been institutionalized against my will it wouldn’t have helped. It would have just made me sicker.

Yet the only person I was a danger to was myself.

So I ask, why does a place like Canada with no difference in frequency of mental health problems have so few per capita mass murders while the States has them weekly?

The answer is availability of firearms and a culture that has a high tolerance of and a propensity for violence.

Bringing mental health issues into this discussion is a straw man.