A goodly number of mentally ill folks do not have care givers and are given the same rights as others in society to choose whether they take their medications and adhere to their treatments.
I am certain that there are caregivers in this country that would do as you suggest but I work with this on a daily basis and I do not find what you say to be the “norm”. Good, caring, helpful caregivers CANNOT make someone take their meds. The “bad” caregivers can knock them coocoo so they can’t function and get out there to do what this guy did. “Bad” caregivers want the ill person to be no trouble to them and therefore totally sedated.
When mentally ill folks were turned out on the streets back in the seventies and the world of the homeless began in huge numbers it was our glorious government that did it. I know because I worked for Medicaid in Mississippi at that time.
The federal government has tied the hands of the states in many ways in dealing with mental illness. Someone with some common sense should be in charge up there in Washington because the dingalings we have don’t know their a@@es from a hole in the ground.
You cannot MAKE someone take their medications or go to their treatment centers. Instead the enormous cost of their care is charged to each and every one of us because they bounce in and out of our psychiatric hospitals.
These folks often choose illicit drugs instead of their medications and then we have a person who is capable of what happened in Tucson. If fingers need to be pointed then we, as a union, need to turn toward Washington and point our fingers and shout “it is YOU that has allowed this”!
I don't have the answer to the origin of this plague of psychopaths, but the list is now too long to ignore the least common denominator -- that they have either a history of psychological treatment or drug treatment or both -- and then they go on shooting sprees.
This nonsense about "they went off their meds" and "good care givers vs. bad care givers" is just that. Nonsense. It's a rationale to hide ineffectual and/or socially dangerous practices in the name of "treatment." There is not one single psychotropic drug that cures anything. What we are living with is drug-made automatons and sociopaths who are made to pass off as "normal" then allowed to walk free among us.
I would favor a law that eliminates the right of gun ownership to any person who takes psychotropic medications -- you need to be medicated to get through your day? Fine. You can't own a gun. You want drug treatment? Fine. You're on a registry and so is your psychiatrist.
Then watch and see the "mental health" community wail and moan about the violation of their patient's rights while the innocent stand by and get slaughtered. The "care givers" aka drug vendors should be criminally liable for the conduct of their patients.
This carnage has to end.