{"id":45286,"date":"2025-07-29T14:39:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45286\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T14:39:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T14:39:07","slug":"trumps-executive-order-on-serious-mental-illness-is-a-good-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/45286\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s executive order on serious mental illness is a good step"},"content":{"rendered":"

My older brother has schizophrenia. He\u2019s never believed he\u2019s sick, refuses treatment, and has spent years bouncing between emergency rooms, jail cells, and the streets of Los Angeles. To the system, he\u2019s\u201cunhoused\u201d and \u201cnoncompliant.\u201d We doctors call it anosognosic, pathologically unable to recognize his own illness. That isn\u2019t defiance. It\u2019s brain disease.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why I support President Trump\u2019s recent executive order<\/a> on crime, homelessness, and serious mental illness. It directs federal action to remove people with untreated psychiatric conditions from public spaces and into care, including, if necessary, through involuntary treatment. Some call this controversial. I call it compassionate.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a neurologist. I\u2019ve treated patients who arrive in the hospital with stroke, dementia, or seizures and no insight into their condition. They might deny their paralysis or hallucinate loved ones long gone. They\u2019re confused, disoriented, and sometimes combative.<\/p>\n

But we don\u2019t leave them on the curb. We don\u2019t wait for them to \u201cwant help.\u201d We treat them \u2014 urgently, respectfully, and often without their immediate consent, because the brain has temporarily robbed them of the capacity to choose.<\/p>\n

Schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses are no different. It\u2019s time we stop pretending otherwise.<\/p>\n

The idea that civil liberties mean leaving people to deteriorate in public, untreated, is not progressive. It\u2019s paralyzing. For decades, we\u2019ve tiptoed around this reality, prioritizing theoretical rights over lived outcomes. My brother\u2019s \u201cfreedom\u201d to refuse care has cost him everything: his housing, his health, his future. That\u2019s not liberty. That\u2019s neglect.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tTrump seeks to make it easier for people with mental illnesses to be involuntarily committed<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve navigated the system from both sides, as a physician, scientist, and drug developer, and as a brother watching someone I love disappear into delusion. I\u2019ve seen how current civil solutions like California\u2019s CARE Court offer legal choreography without teeth. These programs often drag on for months or years, with no enforceable treatment, no dedicated resources, and no real ability to intervene. They create the illusion of reform without actual care.<\/p>\n

The uncomfortable truth is that Reagan-era deinstitutionalization simultaneously went too far and not far enough. We closed psychiatric hospitals with the promise of community care, but never built the infrastructure to support it. The result is what we see today in every major city: people with untreated psychosis living and dying on the streets, surrounded by the public but profoundly alone.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s executive order could signal a willingness to reverse course. But if the U.S. acts only to remove people from view and not to heal, it will repeat the worst mistakes of the past. This moment demands more than commitment laws. It demands commitment to care.<\/p>\n

That means creating real facilities with trained staff, not just more jail beds. It means funding long-term psychiatric housing with structured, evidence-based treatment, not short-term crisis beds that discharge people back to the sidewalk. It means empowering families and clinicians to act early, before tragedy, while ensuring rights are protected and recovery remains the goal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Critics warn of coercion. But there\u2019s nothing more coercive than untreated brain disease. My brother is not living freely. He is trapped by a mind that cannot perceive reality. When he talks to himself, yells at the sky, and dumpster-dives to avoid being \u201cpoisoned,\u201d that is not choice. It\u2019s illness. And it\u2019s entirely treatable.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent much of my career developing novel treatments for serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, treatment-resistant depression, and severe substance use. I believe in the power of innovation in medicine. But no treatment, no matter how advanced, can reach someone who lacks insight and declines all contact. We need a legal and medical framework that allows us to reach them, to treat not just the willing, but the vulnerable.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t hesitate to treat a stroke patient who denies their deficits. We don\u2019t wait for someone with Alzheimer\u2019s to \u201cconsent\u201d to safety precautions. We understand that brain diseases impair autonomy. Psychiatry must be granted the same clarity and the same clinical urgency.<\/p>\n

The executive order gives us an opening. I am optimistic that the Trump administration will follow through with the resources, infrastructure, and policy needed to make this work because safer, healthier communities depend on it. If we seize this moment with real reform, we can finally confront the humanitarian crisis of untreated serious mental illness. But if we let political discomfort override moral responsibility, we will continue to abandon those who cannot advocate for themselves.<\/p>\n

After a long inpatient stay years ago, my brother briefly emerged from the grip of his illness. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like me anymore,\u201d he said. For the first time, he glimpsed what the disease had taken from him. It was treatment that made that moment possible \u2014 not hope alone, but medical care that dialed down the psychosis enough for him to see himself again. That version of him is still there. He deserves a system willing to bring him back, even when he can\u2019t ask for it.<\/p>\n

We must act, not out of fear, but out of reason, responsibility, and compassion. Refusing to treat the most vulnerable is abandonment.<\/p>\n

Shaheen E. Lakhan, M.D., Ph.D., is a board-certified neurologist and pain physician, former department chair and curricular dean of a medical school, and multiple first-in-class therapeutics developer whose family has been profoundly impacted by brain diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My older brother has schizophrenia. He\u2019s never believed he\u2019s sick, refuses treatment, and has spent years bouncing between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[19869,97,259,260,2471],"class_list":{"0":"post-45286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-advocacy","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-mentalhealth","12":"tag-neurology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}