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The problem with someone who has schizophrenia and is not being treated with medication is that they are often impossible to help or even control. The patient does have rights as a human being, families cannot force-feed them their medications. Families cannot stop them from slipping into psychosis. If you are dealing with an adult with a mental illness who refuses to be treated with medications, the family can do very little about it... unless it can be proven that they are a possible danger to themselves or others. And that is a very difficult thing for a family to prove. It is generally only proven after the fact, after the patient has harmed himself or someone else.

Pan_Yans Wife said: The problem with someone who has schizophrenia and is not being treated with medication is that they are often impossible to help or even control. The patient does have rights as a human being, families cannot force-feed them their medications.

Yes, and the rights must be observed even if it would be better for the person and society if the rights could be removed by someone other than the patient. My best friend has her granddaughter and her granddaughter's husband living with her right now. Both have mental health issues. He is the "silent" type but very angry. My friend has to lock her bedroom door at night. This guy will creep up on her while she's cooking and stand behind her silently until she turns and sees him. It scares her but she won't toss them out. Her granddaughter IS taking her medication, thankfully.

My mother's college days friend finally had enough of her two mentally ill children, called a Social Worker to the house, learned that she had to be a danger to herself or them before they could place her in a mental health hospital. So she turned off the bedside lamp, unscrewed the bulb and then stuck her finger in the socket and started to turn the light back on. Needless to say, she was removed to the State MH Hospital and her two children were placed in separate MH facilities. Sadly, living with those children for over thirty years took its toll on her mental health and she died at the MH Hospital after twenty years, never fully recovering, although she would have lucid times. Mostly, though, in those lucid times, she would write my Mother and tell her that she knew she was not sane enough to live outside the MH Hospital.

My Mom's friend had no parents living and had only one child who wasn't mentally ill. That family didn't live nearby and wasn't rich. There was no one to take care of this woman except the State. And the State got her house and sold it and some land she'd inherited from her mother. But that was all the resources she had. It was a really sad situation. And probably one of thousands similar throughout the USofA.