son with bipolar

I am a friend of a family whos son is severly ill, he is 29 years old and has been in and out of jail and mental institutions, his main problem seems to be that he cannot stay on his meds. he will take his meds and after a period of time will decide he is better and get off them, he is extremely violent and the family has already tried 5150, but he ends up getting out and continuing his rampage, they have a restraining order on him and he recently vandalized their home, they are worried for their saftey but dont believe jail would help. since he is over age it seems like there are few options to keep him somewhere long enough to get treated and put back on his medication. i wanted to suggest pressing charges for vandalizm and violating a restraining order, to have him arrested and put in a lock down mental institution, because he is not willing to coopertate. but i'm afraid of taking the risk that the court or police will not see him mentally ill and end up sending him to jail, where he cannot get proper treatment. is this suggestion ok? or are their other options in getting him treated? Thank you.

[ILADVOCATE]

As much as I dislike these laws and have seen them misused I'd have to say in this case if what you are describing is accurate and factual, then most states have an outpatient committment law, that requires a person to stay on medication and they are monitored to make sure they take it. I generally think there are better solutions but if its a given that each time he goes off medication he does become psychotic and destructive and ends up in the psychiatric hospital or jail, than that would be one solution. I would say though that for his sake make sure that whatever medication he is required to take is the most up to date treatment currently available. Usually what they end up being given is injectable antipsychotics and its important to understand "the rate of tardive dyskinesia for the older typicals such as Haldol is 5% per person per year and for the atypicals 2.5% per person per year" and my psychopharmocologist informed me. As I've put in many posts I'm glycine, a glutatamate antagonist in Phase II FDA study and have been identified as making a full recovery and this class of anti-psychotics do not cause tardive dyskinesia or diabetes and are far more effective as the studies are bearing out. One thing this study medication did for me is increase my level of self awareness so I never questioned why I needed medication or the fact that I had a psychiatric disability. Keep up to date with new treatments because when these come out because if the level of self awareness in your son increases, then its quite possible he will be able to stay on medication on his own because he understands why he needs it. Here's a link to all new medications in study that updates itself that you can bookmark:
http://www.psychmeds123.info/
And he could be eligible for supported or supportive housing for people with psychiatric disabilities that are forensic (official term for people in this population who have been incarerated or arrested) as well as other supports and services. It would be wise to have these services available to him because people with psychiatric disabilities are brutally mistreated in prison and most long term psychiatric institutions have been closed down as people are returned to the community and are reserved for people who are classified as continually dangerous to themselves or others and a person does not do well in that environment either. I would say as new treatments come out there will be less people facing these issues but we still need to advocate for the supports and services they need so they have the ability to have medication coverage at all times and never get shut out of the system involuntarily which often has dire results for the person and sometimes for society.