If you take the average person who doesn’t have a mental illness and has no relationship with anyone who does, the system we have is pretty well optimized for their needs.

We balance many difficult and inherently conflicting goals, such as:

1) minimizing treatment, which is expensive and does have bad side effects

2) sufficiently good access to treatment where it’s economical for prevention

3) fear of being wrongly hospitalized (error, political motivation, etc.)

4) sufficient ability to lock other people up for frightening or violent behavior in public

It’s a tough problem, but I think the tradeoffs are managed near optimally, granting that the rights and interests of the mentally ill don’t matter at all to most public officials or voters.

Except that those same people then complain about how many homeless people there are.

Reagan's destruction of the mental health system was really awful. The system needed improvement and more accountability, but we need it.

I had an adult step-brother too ill with schizophrenia to be cared for at home (he began making violent threats and stealing things, up to and including my mom's car), but under the current threshold for being compelled to take his medication. My mom (his step-mom; an attorney) spent years trying to find ways to get him help, but he bounced in and out of being homeless and ended up being murdered at about age 60 in a halfway house. Just a stupid, tragic waste of a life and all of the resources mis-allocated.

Sadly, it's just another example of how the US is penny-wise and pound-foolish when it comes to social services.