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In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decided that what happens to an individual is her choice, meaning that being forced to carry a fetus to full term violated a person's inalienable right do decide what is to happen to her body. Another way of saying it is, "Keep the government out of my (her) womb."

Forcing an individual to take psychiatric drugs could be seen analogously to anti-abortion laws that were struck down under the Supreme Court ruling. Forcing an individual to take psychiatric medication against his or her will could be seen as a basic violation of human rights.

But it is more complicated than that. To force medication on someone, often they are first judged incompetent. This means that a mental illness has wiped out an individual's ability to make a rational decision. That's one point in which the forced medication differs from Roe v. Wade. 

This is tangential: In the case of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court's decision was partly based upon the premise that life does not begin at conception, and this is where people on either side of the issue lose reason and where religious people sometimes resort to violence. This is an argument between science versus some sects of Christianity. Scientifically, it is obvious that a clump of cells isn't capable of suffering. However, some sects of Christianity believe that unborn human life is sacred. The Supreme Court of the U.S. assessed at what point a developing fetus has consciousness. 

(It would certainly confuse the entire argument on both sides if we had the technology to support an unborn fetus through mechanical means.) 

In the case of client's rights not to be forced into taking mind-restricting medication for the rest of our lives, this has been a major thrust of the Patients' Rights movement. The patients' rights movement is all but gone, at least in the East Bay, and I am unsure of the exact causes. 

The rationale behind forced medication is that the patient is being saved from a disease that ruins gray matter, and this disease is making the patient unable to judge and to discern that treating the disease is necessary. 

If a person who is believed to be impaired by a psychiatric condition can function and navigate the system, there are numerous legal and other avenues through which they could stop the system from forcing medication on her or him. Thus, intervention through a court or a Supreme Court decision would not be needed. 

On the other hand, what about someone who is temporarily insane and who could possibly recover from this with methods other than being medicated? A drawback of medication is that it will permanently change the brain, and if taken for a few years, can not be stopped for the rest of the patient's life. Some theorize that antipsychotics impair higher functions, and these are the functions that could allow a person to get well from their condition through nonchemical means. If not medicated, a patient could ultimately leave the system behind, and could build a real life. How do you counter this argument? 

And, what about the concept that being forced to take medication by authorities creates resentment and is itself provocative for attempts at going rogue. 

On the other hand, if someone can decide for oneself, as I did, that we can't keep playing Russian-Roulette with going on and off medication, it allows us to make a personal commitment to compliance that is not based on force, but which, instead is based on our own insight. And this is a developmental step that many people with mental illness never achieve. The continuous presence of being forced to comply to medication will probably block this development. When that happens, the patient again becomes noncompliant soon after the force is withdrawn, if it ever is. 

It is a sad way to live if, for the rest of our lives we live in a supervised situation. 

Forced treatment? In the short term it works. In my past, short term forced medication saved my life. However, ongoing forced treatment, mandated by government authorities, supposedly for my own good, I reject that notion for the above reasons. 

Does medication work to treat mental illness? It seems to. It seems to be a lifesaver. Before medication we had lobotomies and shock. We had state hospitals in which patients were subjected to horrible conditions. E. Fuller Torrey, well-known psychiatrist, and author of "Surviving Schizophrenia" (and highly vilified by many mentally ill patients' rights advocates) stated that we need to do more brain research for better medications. In an article, he argued that there have been no significant advances in treatment since the development of Clozaril, which was discovered more than thirty years ago. 

Better medications could revolutionize or even eliminate a large part of the dilemma of forced treatment versus the liberty and self-determination of individuals.