sadhoc:

if you’re a mentally ill adult, especially if you’re psychotic or have bipolar, i highly recommend you look into getting a psychiatric advance directive. basically they’re a form you can fill out where you can specify what kind of treatment you want and don’t want in the case that you ever get legally declared incompetent. normally, getting declared incompetent means that psychiatrists take away your right to make decisions about your mental health care. for example, they can force you to take medications you don’t want or institutionalize you longterm without your consent. also the state appoints someone they choose to legally “consent” in your place.

what a psychiatric advance directive does is put limits on what the psychiatrists assigned to you can do. you can appoint your own person to be your legal representative, someone you trust who knows you and cares about you. you can also specify what hospitals you don’t want to be sent to or what doctors you don’t want to see or medications you don’t want to take or whether or not you consent to electroconvulsive treatment. you can also say what you do want, like i put down that they decided to institutionalize me, i wanted it to be at a specific psych ward i’d already been to and had a not terrible time at. and now, if i ever get declared incompetent, psychiatrists are legally not allowed to put me back on the meds that gave me a seizure. 

nobody wants to be legally declared incompetent. it’s really scary to think about, but it does happen, especially to people with psychosis or bipolar disorder. it’s better to have legal safeguards in place ahead of time and not need them than to get declared incompetent and not have an advance directive