Doubts about the reality of mental illness and the benefits of psychiatric treatment helped foment a revolution in the law's attitude toward mental disorders over the last 25 years. Legal reformers pushed for laws to make it more difficult to hospitalize and treat people with mental illness, and easier to punish them when they committed criminal acts. Advocates of reform promised vast changes in how our society deals with the mentally ill; opponents warily predicted chaos and mass suffering. Now, with the tide of reform ebbing, Paul Appelbaum examines what these changes have wrought. The message emerging from his careful review is a surprising one: less has changed than almost anyone predicted. When the law gets in the way of commonsense beliefs about the need to treat serious mental illness, it is often put aside. Judges, lawyers, mental health professionals, family members, and the general public collaborate in fashioning an extra-legal process to accomplish what they think is fair for persons with mental illness. Appelbaum demonstrates this thesis in analyses of four of the most important reforms in mental health law over the past two decades: involuntary hospitalization, liability of professionals for violent acts committed by their patients, the right to refuse treatment, and the insanity defense. This timely and important work will inform and enlighten the debate about mental health law and its implications and consequences. The book will be essential for psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, lawyers, and all those concerned with our policies toward people with mental illness.

Who commits suicide in this country, and why? Should we legalize assisted suicide and euthanasia? What has the last decade taught us about those who are suicidal? In this new edition of his acclaimed work, Dr. Herbert Hendin addresses these and other important questions. Demonstrating that treatment of seriously suicidal people is possible, he also shows how our social policy toward suicide is marked by misconception. He evaluates the "right-to-die" movement, and in a comprehensive new chapter he presents a powerful portrait of euthanasia and assisted suicide in the Netherlands. Interviews with the leading practitioners and proponents are included. This book, integrating psychological and social knowledge, has much to say not only about how we die but also about how we choose to live.