NR 607 Week 1 Discussion; Involuntary Treatment.....

emergency physician can easily involuntarily commit the patient for self-neglect by way of medication noncompliance or if the patient experiences persistent hallucinations or delusions that increase the potential harm risk for self or others. Another way that a patient can be involuntarily committed in South Carolina is if a patient is brought to the emergency room with suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, and homicidal ideations. It is also very easy to get a patient brought to the emergency room against their will for a psychiatric evaluation. Anyone can go in front of a judge, tell the judge anything about the patient whether it is true or not, and then the judge will sign an order of detention to have the patient picked up, and be brought to the emergency room for a psychiatric evaluation to determine if involuntary commitment is necessary. Granted, the judge may not know if the information being told to them is fake because no evidence is needed for an order of detention. If South Carolina followed the MHA position, then it would be very difficult to have a patient involuntarily committed, and even more difficult to obtain an order of detention. MHA would allow the patients to try other non-hospital treatment options rather than to go straight to involuntary hospitalization. MHA also allows patients to have a variety of outpatient options, excessive community awareness via education, and many different community resources. South Carolina has more options for involuntary than voluntary treatment. There are voluntary outpatient options, but it takes months to years to get into because there are not enough resources for the population II. After reading the position statements, with which statement do you find yourself more philosophically aligned? Explain why. I am torn between the two statements as far as my philosophical alignment is concerned. I agree with MHA that those who have a mental illness and cannot make informed decisions should be protected and that they should be referred to the appropriate outpatient resources preserving involuntary treatment as last resort (Wheeler et al., 2020). I also agree with the APA that those who are noncompliant with treatments causing the inability to care for self, suicidal ideations, suicidal attempt, or homicidal ideations should be involuntarily committed. I probably lean more towards the APA position statement because even those with a mental illness that cannot make informed decisions can threaten to harm themselves or others in addition to choosing not to take medications that are prescribed. Outpatient resources are important and necessary for those patients that are stable and not a harm to society or themselves, but sometimes outpatient treatment fails no matter how many resources that the patient with mental illness has. Even if a patient has a severe mental illness such as autism, while receiving outpatient resource treatment, the patient can still get upset and put others at risk for harm. Between the two position statements, I suppose that I am more philosophically aligned with is the APA position because it presents more of