Our position
We are FOR involuntary treatment — where severe mental illness has taken away a person’s ability to recognize they are ill.
This is not a debate we are neutral on. When schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, or bipolar psychosis is combined with anosognosia — the person cannot choose treatment they do not believe they need. A law that waits for them to ask for help is a law that abandons them.
We are not trying to take away anyone’s rights. Their rights are important to us. Our goal is to make our loved ones independent, law-abiding citizens living full lives — treatment is how they get to that point, not something that takes it away.
Why many families stay quiet. Other organizations can advocate openly because their children’s disabilities are visible — there is no hiding it. Our hope is always that our kids will recover one day, and that they keep their privacy and autonomy — that not everybody needs to know they live with mental illness. Speaking out while they’re sick can feel like taking that away from them. That is why so many families don’t come forward, don’t march, don’t call their MPPs. And remember: it is their story to tell, not ours — our stories are only told to get them well again. We are speaking now because staying silent while the law fails them costs more.
Imagine telling a parent whose child is going through treatment for cancer, or living with any other disability: “I’m sorry — your kid can’t get help unless he goes to jail first.” That is exactly what families like ours are told, every day.
What we are asking for
- A separate section of Ontario’s Mental Health Act for serious mental illness. Schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar psychosis are brain disorders, not character flaws and not choices. They need their own section of the law — with criteria that reflect how these illnesses actually work.
- Treatment before tragedy. Families should not have to wait until a loved one becomes dangerous to get them care. The law must allow intervention when severe illness and lack of insight make it impossible for the person to seek help themselves.
- Support for the Ontario Psychiatric Association’s Mental Health Law Reform Proposals. Ontario’s psychiatrists have put forward concrete, expert reforms to reduce legislative barriers to care. We back those proposals.
The OPA’s four proposals
(from their Mental Health Law Reform Campaign, updated January 2026):
- Allow treatment to continue while a finding of incapacity is being appealed — instead of leaving the person untreated for months during the appeal.
- Remove the “past response to treatment” requirement from involuntary admission criteria — so people in a first episode aren’t shut out of care.
- Change the admission criterion from “serious bodily harm” to “serious harm,” and narrow the Act’s definition of “mental disorder” to mean serious mental illness.
- Extend a first involuntary admission to up to 30 days.
Background reading: the OPA Mental Health Law Reform Working Group Summary Report — the foundational document behind these proposals, published on the OPA’s own website.
- Families included in all stages of care.
We’re the ones who see the illness up close, every day — and in most cases, we’re the only ones who truly care. We’re caretakers of our adult sons and daughters. When they’re very ill, we handle everything: food, hygiene, clothes, cleaning, medications, medical appointments.
We become the primary caretakers in every aspect of their lives. We free up hospital beds. We take daily care off our nurses’ and doctors’ plates. We save taxpayers money. And we get no pay and no credit for it. Most of us cut back work hours or take leaves — while the mortgage and bills keep coming. Many of us have younger children depending on us too. And the single parents — how do they survive?
When our loved ones are off their medications and doing dangerous things, the only way to get help is calling the police. If we’re lucky, they take them to a hospital. But because they’re adults, doctors won’t talk to us — we’re shut out, yet we’re the ones responsible when they get discharged. Even when we’re legally the substitute decision maker, hospital staff often don’t understand what that means.
Supplements, therapies, legal fees — all out of our pockets, because government support never comes. We rarely take care of ourselves, and our health suffers for it.
And our biggest fear: we’re aging. What happens when we can no longer take care of them? They end up on the streets — or dead on the street — and nobody cares.
When a loved one first becomes ill, families go through a mourning. We mourn the person they were. The hopes and dreams we had for them. The futures they’ll never have.
Assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation must include the people who carry this weight every single day.
5. Anosognosia must be recognized — by doctors, hospitals, and the public. Right now, it is not. The biggest reason people with severe mental illness don’t get help is still unrecognized by too many in the system. Public and professional education on anosognosia must be part of any reform.
Further reading: “The patient declined” — a first-person essay in The Lancet Psychiatry (Aug 2026) by Patrick William Kelly, who lives with bipolar I disorder, on why anosognosia breaks capacity assessments and why families must be heard.
How we work
We believe a little bit of change is better than no change. We push for the full reforms above, and we welcome every step that moves the law toward them.