ABSTRACT
This chapter proposes a therapeutic jurisprudence model for civil commitment, one that seeks more effectively to balance legal and therapeutic considerations. Two principal justifications are typically offered - the government's police power interest in protecting the community, and its parens patriae interest. Principles of due process and therapeutic jurisprudence also support two additional limits on civil commitment. These are: the therapeutic appropriateness principle, the least restrictive alternative principle. Voluntary admission to a mental hospital constitutes an important alternative to civil commitment. A therapeutic jurisprudence model of civil commitment would recognise a right to treatment not only within the institution, but within the community as well. A therapeutic jurisprudence model of civil commitment thus would allow a limited right of civilly committed patients to refuse treatment. Outpatient commitment involving forced medication would need to satisfy essentially the same standards required to prove involuntary hospitalisation and the imposition of intrusive treatment.
