Mental Health Law
All but four states in the U.S. allow for some form of involuntary treatment for mental illness for short periods of time under emergency conditions, although criteria vary. Since the late 1990s, a growing number of states have adopted Assisted Outpatient Commitment (AOC) laws.
Under "assisted" outpatient commitment, people committed involuntarily can live outside the psychiatric hospital, sometimes under strict conditions including reporting to mandatory psychiatric appointments, taking psychiatric drugs in the presence of a nursing team, and proving medication blood levels. Forty-two states presently allow for outpatient commitment.
Read more about this topic: Involuntary Treatment
Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental, health and/or law:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“Talent is nothing but a prolonged period of attention and a shortened period of mental assimilation.”
—Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938)
“He had had much experience of physicians, and said, “the only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.””
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Unless the law of marriage were first made human, it could never become divine.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)