About the Author

Dottie Pacharis is retired from a law firm in Washington, DC, and lives with her husband, George, also retired. They divide their time between Fort Myers Beach, Florida, and West River, Maryland. Since her son’s battle with bipolar disorder, she has become an advocate for the mentally ill.

The Treatment Advocacy Center, Arlington, Virginia

A humane system is based on someone’s need for treatment. A humane system protects those too sick to seek or accept care voluntarily. A humane system does not require someone to brandish a knife to get help or require them to hit rock bottom before they are lifted up again.

Uninformed calls to protect “civil rights” betray a profound misunderstanding of that term. There is nothing “civil” about leaving people lost to disease to live homeless on the streets, suffering rape, and victimization. There is nothing “right” about leaving someone untreated and psychotic, rendering them incapable of discerning whether they are attacking a CIA operative or their own mother.

Mentally ill individuals have a civil right to receive treatment, even when their brain disease precludes awareness of their illness. And the public has a civil right to be protected from potentially dangerous individuals. We are failing both the patients and the public.

This situation is an understandable overreaction to abuses of the past, when the mentally ill were confined too often and too long. But it’s time for the pendulum to swing back to a more sensible middle.