Argumentative Essay On Forced Medication

There has been a heated debate on the issue of forced medication especially in psychiatric hospitals. Clients with mental illness often complain on the practice of forced medication because according to them the effects of forced medication outweighs the benefits of the psychotropic medication. On the contrary, mental health clinicians state that it is necessary to use forced medication because without the medication, the clients can become violent and dangerous. Due to these conflicting opinions, people are left wondering who should have the right to decide whether a client has to take medication. However, there are three lines of defense for people who are suffering from mental illness for coercive treatment. These are: societal interests
Patients may receive compulsory treatment but not coercive treatment but still others do receive coercive treatment in voluntary care. Another study was done to describe patient experiences and the nurse perceptions of patient’s experiences of forced medication before, during and after forced medication (Haglund et al., 2003). The study also described patient and nurse perceptions of alternatives to forced medication. The number of people interviewed was 11 both patients and nurses. The findings demonstrated that forced medication evokes a number of patients’ experiences as reported by both patients and nurses. These experiences were disease, being forcibly medicated and the drug. Most of the patients involved in this study mentioned a number of alternatives but the nurses did not mention any. A very small number of patients, not as many patients as the nurses thought, were in favor of forced medication. The study came to the conclusion that patients and nurses do not share the same perceptions about what patients experience during the application of force medication (Haglund et al.,