And Republican House Rep. Anne B. Donahue disagrees.

So we want to believe that if our community hospitals can just add a few more bolts to the doors and to forcibly inject medications into patients who don't comply with a doctor's treatment plan within a week, they will be able to "handle" such patients quickly and efficiently.

We are willing to build a new, cheaper non-hospital institution for those who don't respond to medications, but we do not want to recognize that this component is primarily for our own self-interest, to allay our fears about the tiny number of those whose symptoms do include violence.

We don't seem to be interested in understanding the need for providing both the kind of top-flight inpatient care that is needed for all highest-severity illness, and for the collaborative alternatives that we are trying to encourage among "willing" patients of every other kind.

Involuntary medication acts to divide