Mental illness Psychiatric treatment

When a person with mental illness commits a violent crime, it is because the person stopped taking vital medications. Mental illness psychiatric treatment providers step in to procure medications through filing a request with the courts in these potentially dangerous moments,

However, this process is anything but easy in Massachusetts. The Commonwealth’s mental health statutes consider antipsychotic medications — used to treat conditions such as psychosis, mania, and paranoia — as “extraordinary measures.”

This label differentiates these medications from virtually all others that doctors prescribe. Such a distinction creates challenges for doctors, mental health facilities, families, and communities in caring for patients in their most vulnerable moments, often when they lack the insight to make decisions for themselves.