It also raised the the question of whether or not such incompetence is mostly where such a law would be used.
It certainly doesn't identify a range of treatments proffered by the mandate, which is in turn influenced as much by the underlying objective of society mandating treatment as it is the condition of the person to be treated.
The objective of mandated treatment could be exclusively or primarily public safety or the objective could be primarily or exclusively for the good of the patient. The willingness of society to limit the range of treatments could be quite different depending upon what is trying to be achieved.
If the goal is public safety, particularly safety from violent behavior, then the persons being placed under compulsory treatment should be the ones that are likely to be dangerous. At this time isn't any evidence that the psychological industry has the capacity to accurate predict who those people are. A person whose mental state may include considerable delusions or hallucinations may be no more or even less dangerous than an apparently high functioning person with no delusions. There is simply no good and reliable way to identify potentially dangerous persons among the mentally ill.
If the goal is treating the mental illness then returning the person to his or her highest state of function is desirable. And effectiveness of treatment is an overarching concern.
With respect to the patient's best outcomes, a psychologist writing in a NY times letter to the editor writes that patients may resent and resist mandated treatment and have poor outcomes.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-treating-the-mentally-ill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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... for most patients experiencing psychotic states, mandated treatment may create more problems than it solves.
For many medical conditions, better outcomes occur when patients share in treatment design and disease management. Imposed treatments tend to engender resistance and resentment. This is also true for psychiatric conditions.
Patients with psychotic symptoms often feel that their own experience is dismissed as meaningless, like the ravings of an intoxicated or delirious person. Decisions to decline antipsychotic medications are often regarded mainly as a manifestation of illness — an illness the person is too sick to recognize — even though many people might reject antipsychotics because of metabolic and other toxicities.
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Which brings us back to the problem of the rights of the patient ordered into compulsory treatment...
Once subject to compulsory treatment does the mental patient, retain any right to reject types of treatment, particularly the right to refuse sterilization, electroshock treatment, insulin shock, lobotomy (or any other psychosurgical brain operation), aversion therapy, narcotherapy, deep sleep therapy, and/or any drugs producing unwanted side effects?
Does a patient have the right to refuse vocational therapy that requires working without payment or at wages lower than standard for similar work in the community at large?
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