The Ultimate Civil Liberty

As posted on the Treatment Advocacy Center's (TAC) website, Kurt Entsminger, the newly named Executive Director of TAC, was recently interviewed by Schizophrenia Connections' Robin Cunningham. The following question and answer explains in very logical, common sense language the reason timely treatment should be available and provided for anyone who has a severe mental illness and lack of insight to seek treatment:

Robin: Some consumers consider AOT laws to be a violation of their civil liberties, a form of incarceration.

Kurt: You can start from the proposition that people have a constitutional right, a civil liberty if you will, to remain psychotic and delusional, and to have thoughts and say things that make no sense. This seems to be the position that is taken by many civil libertarians. The TAC believes that if you look at the situation practically, the ultimate civil liberty that we want to protect is the ability of people to function normally and well in society, to be able to achieve their maximum potential as human beings. The only way to accomplish this is to be committed, as a society, to providing people help when they're unable to obtain help by themselves. So we see ourselves as being involved in helping to promote civil liberties by ensuring that people who are prisoners of a psychosis can be set free of it. In other words, we are involved in providing the key that will enable them to walk out of their private prisons and to once again function normally in society.