There's a reason people with serious mental illness don't take their medicines: they have unpleasant side-effects.<p>The main type of medication is anti-psychotics. These drugs are also classed as "major tranquilizers" - drugs such as the notorious "chemical cosh" haloperidol are in this class. They suppress delusions, or at least delusional behaviour; but they make you gain weight, rock, tremble, mumble. The side-effects are progressive. Modern anti-psychotics have less side-effects than the old ones, but their effects are very marked.<p>For people with bipolar, their illness sometimes makes them feel alive and cheerful, and the drugs take that away from them, depriving them of affect and zest for life. Basically the pills make them unhappy.<p>So we're discussing forcing people to take pills that make them feel ill or unhappy. That's only justifiable if the compulsion regime is completely trustworthy. We have a compulsion regime in the UK (we tore down our asylums back in the 80s, just like the US). If you have an episode, you can be incarcerated for a few months on the say-so of two doctors. It seems to work alright - as far as I can see, they farm you out to some private secure clinic.<p>But between the train-wreck of US law enforcement and the US reluctance to spend money on public health, along with the heavy, heavy politicization of everything in the USA, I think it would be dangerous to adopt the same model in the USA.