The way I see it: forced treatment is humane when the person being treated consents afterward. e.g. stopping someone in a bad mental state from suicide or anore

The way I see it: forced treatment is humane when the person being treated consents afterward. e.g. stopping someone in a bad mental state from suicide or anorexia, so that they thank you when they improve. Of course it’s not possible to know whether the person will consent beforehand, so you have to predict (and if you get it wrong, you messed up). In most cases this is what real-world suicide prevention leads to, because if a person is adamant on killing themselves they usually find a way. The exception is really sick people who want to kill themselves, but can’t because they have limited autonomy. That would be covered by euthanasia and is one of the reasons why it is very important ethically. For other mentally ill people, forced treatment is still only ok if they may actually get better and thank you later. If someone is dirty, homeless, and senile, but they don’t care, putting them into a retirement home does not make them happy so it does not actually benefit them. If someone acts sane only when they get medication but they hate it, giving them the medication does not benefit them, it benefits others. In these cases forced treatment may still be practically necessary and morally ok to benefit society (we don’t want dirty homeless people begging on the street, so we outlaw public indecency and soliciting, and some illnesses make a person dangerous). But I think that we need to understand that forced treatment is not to benefit the mentally ill themselves, but us, and also take their feelings into account. e.g. force homeless people out of the streets and into homes, but give them autonomy, and if their homes decay and they sit around all day and don’t care, let them. EDIT: Should also add that nursing and caregiving are jobs which give people power over other, vulnerable people. Many of the doctors which take care of mentally ill and disabled people are genuinely amazing people who honestly don’t deserve the bad connotation, but some apply to these jobs to take advantage of their power over others. So when forcing treatment on someone, we really need to ensure that those in charge of the treatment have said person’s best interests at heart, and need to be monitored and held accountable. This is something which is unfortunately lacking because the people who are exploited or in danger of being exploited and thus care the most can’t really advocate well, so the burden falls to beaurocracy which cannot adequately manage.