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Involuntary treatment punishes the mentally ill and marginalized

Discrimination and stigma perpetuate harm instead of healing

March 6, 2025

People with mental illness are the only group routinely denied the right to choose their own medical treatment. 

The BC Mental Health Act permits authorities to involuntarily commit and treat individuals with “serious mental health disorders” against their will, stripping them of their autonomy. But what does it take to be labelled mentally ill? Refusing an arranged marriage as a South Asian daughter? Speaking out at a human rights rally? 

Both actions led to my involuntary commitment. 

I was forced into the mental health system despite never posing a danger to myself or others. I’ve never shown violent tendencies. While I acknowledge that mental illness can sometimes lead to suicide or homicide, I believe that such acts aren’t exclusive to those with mental illness. 

What’s crucial though, is that treatments like involuntary “care” can drive people to feel as though they have no other option, triggering a propensity for self-harm or harming others. 

History repeats itself 

The brutal history of mental asylums and the mistreatment of psychiatric patients laid the foundation for many of the challenges still present in mental health care today. 

At the turn of the 20th century, Crownsville State Hospital in Maryland was built by African American patients under forced labour, exclusively serving Black individuals during segregation. The hospital’s history of abuse and neglect lingers like an unshakable ghost. 

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, William Norris, a patient at London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, was chained to his bed for 14 years, a haunting example of the inhumane treatment of the mentally ill.  

Before Thorazine (chlorpromazine) was introduced in the 1950s — the drug used to treat schizophrenia and other disorders — many patients were involuntarily subjected to lobotomies, electroconvulsive therapy and other invasive treatments. Around the same time, enslaved African Americans who sought freedom were falsely labelled with a so-called “mental illness” known as Drapetomania, a pseudo-scientific concept used to justify slavery. 

When homosexuality was finally removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973, the creation of a new term emerged: “sexual orientation disturbance.” It wasn’t until 1987 that homosexuality was fully declassified as a disorder.  

I want to know: Why are the mentally ill continuously punished?  

Many people assume that people labelled with a mental illness are admitted to hospital voluntarily, just like individuals suffering from other illnesses. This is not the case at all. Psychiatric patients are frequently committed against their will. 

In September 2024, Premier David Eby announced that the B.C. government would take a new direction in securing “dignified care” by opening “highly secure facilities” to provide involuntary treatments for people with brain injury, mental illness and severe addiction. 

Involuntary treatment can never be a safe or secure option when discrimination against minorities and marginalized groups is so prevalent in Vancouver. 

I have suffered discrimination from nurses in the hospital. I remember one nurse talking to me about how she didn’t think that RCMP officers should be allowed to wear turbans.  

I’ve been bullied by security guards and have personally experienced being placed in restraints. There was nothing therapeutic about this. 

The first correctional centre to carry out involuntary treatment, according to Eby’s office, will be the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre. Think about the optics of that. 

Surrey is my home town. If one suffers from a biochemical imbalance (as I do), why should one be treated like a common criminal under the Mental Health Act? Would you treat a cancer patient this way? Would you devise an act called The Cancer Treatment Act for those who refuse to take radiation treatment? Would you make it legal for police to round up cancer patients and deliver them to the local hospital? Would the daily news cycle emphasize that the person who just murdered her husband was a thyroid cancer patient? 

Professionals who are trying to protect people suffering from schizophrenia should be aware that forcing them into an impersonal cell with a metal toilet, while physically and chemically restraining them, will not heal them in any way. It will only make them distrustful.  

I have learned that experience is a great teacher. If you have never been forced into a mental hospital against your will, it’s difficult to understand — and that’s OK.  

The fact is, it is the poor, the addicted and the marginalized that end up in the system. I have never had a good experience in a psychiatric facility and it has always left me feeling powerless, precisely because I am forced to take medication against my will. 

Hospitalization and medication are not the only treatment options for people suffering from extreme mental illness. Talk therapy, the outdoors, nutrition, exercise and just plain love goes a long way.  

My message for Premier David Eby: Kindness and compassion go much further than stigma and punishment. Maybe it’s time we try?   

Jathinder Sandhu is a Surrey resident and a published poet, writer and member of The Shift peer newsroom. She won writing contests in high school, studied poetry post-secondary and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in communications. Jathinder also plays bass guitar. 

Published in Megaphone magazine on March 7, 2025