There are, to change the domain somewhat, other lifelong illnesses, which arent mental disorders. TDR-TB -- totally drug resistant tuberculosis -- is one of these. Worse, unlike schizophrenia, it's contagious.

And the only viable public health responses are either a total quarantine of infected populations, or killing them.

If you reject the latter, and i hope that you do, you're left with a situation not much different from that posed by schizophrenia: the prospect of institutionalisation, but under terms and conditions in which the afflicted will prefer and seek out that option. Or at the very least not resist it.

I'll also note that lifelong imprisonment is not necessarily the only option, you're appealing to the extreme here. Though sometimes, yes, that _is_ what society must do.

> Schizophrenia is a lifelong illness. Do you keep someone imprisoned for the rest of their life so that you can forcibly medicate them against their will?

No, until the mental disorder is controlled. After all avenues of curing are exhausted, and it's still not under control, then they can be released, provided there's no significant risk that they'll harm others or themselves.

Schizophrenia is not cured, but treated.

So you risk getting into "revolving door" admissions to hospital. A person with a psychosis becomes ill, rejects medication, is detained against their will in hospital and given medication against their will (sometimes by force) until they "become well" enough to be let out of hospital. At which point they're free to decide to stop taking the medication.

I'm not sure that this style of revolving door admission is better for the person than just letting them be homeless. (Although preventing people getting into that situation would be a good idea).

This already happens with homeless people: they become diseased, malnourished, get drunk and hurt themselves. Once the trauma has reached a certain degree that they require hospitalisation, they end up in hospital and released once they've recovered. Are you proposing we not help them at all and just let them fester and die on the streets?

Surely not. The "revolving door" concept, as you call it, is the middle-ground between not helping at all, thus letting a mentally ill person reach trauma more severe, and permanently confining those with incurable mental disorders (but those which can be controlled, and the patient able to live healthily outside the ward), which is both wildly expensive and harder to justify overruling the patient's will and freedom.

No, I'm saying that you can't force people to take medication against their will apart from a few situations.

If you want to provide MH treatment to people it's much better to start with children and young people and better drug and alcohol services, both of which would reduce the amount of homeless people, and also to provide better voluntary MH treatment for homeless people.

People aren't arguing with you because you want to provide MH treatment. People are arguing with you because you want to force that treatment on people against their will.

There is no cure for schizophrenia. I wish there was, but there isn't.