A judge, hearing witnesses and mental health professionals under oath, decides who is unable to behave peacefully. It's usually a last-resort measure, so when it comes to this, it's very clear cut.

Locking up can mean a number of things, but for really bad cases it's just that.

It solves the problem of people out of their mind hurting others because they forget or just refuse to take their medication. And it's a better problem to solve than dealing with dead bodies.

You can still set as many controls as you deem reasonable, but sometimes families are put in impossible situations, just like in the article.

My point was not to answer those questions, it was to demonstrate the lack of nuance in the original post.

I have been close to people in that kind of situation and I am happy to answer.

We tend to see those questions from the nightmarish movie plot perspective in which someone is wrongfully institutionalized. Cuckcoo's Nest and all that.

Also many families want to have their mentally ill members with them. With proper medication they can live a happy life.

But there are terrible situations when they don't take the medication or there's an addiction problem.

There's very little nuance in these cases, really.

>We tend to see those questions from the nightmarish movie plot perspective in which someone is wrongfully institutionalized. Cuckcoo's Nest and all that.

No, these are happpening in real time. Look at how many people on death row get off and you see that the justice system is far from objective.

That's exactly why many US states took down asylums. The idea was good, isolate problematic individuals and get them back on heir feet. Then the system abused it to treat people who needed help badly, and put disproportately marginalized groups in there.

The nuance is that we historically failed to be nuanced, and let biases get in the way.