Non-Compliant

[SecondSister]

First; we live in AZ. Second; my younger brother suffers with bipolar disorder.
What is the recourse one has when a person with mental illness is non-compliant?

[yarrow]

As ILADVOCATE says, it depends.  If you have a working relationship with this person, you might be able to help him understand the importance of trying to comply.

If your brother is a minor, depending on state law in Arizona, your parents may or may not have significant influence on their child's compliance.  If he has reached the age of majority in AZ, it's pretty much out of the family's hands, unless--and this is important--he could be proved in the eyes of the law to be a danger to himself or others.

If none of these apply, probably the best course for concerned family members is to join a support group to help them adjust in the most productive way to a very difficult situation.

[ILADVOCATE]

It would depend on what is happening. A person can only be required to continue treatment if they are dangerous to themselves or others or (in some states) have become that way repeatedly when they discontinued treatment before. However the best thing to do is to encourage the person to continue treatment, to have them discuss with their psychiatrist why they need treatment and why it is beneficial and also to discuss concerns about specific side effects that might lead them to potentially stop treatment and how medications could be appropriately adjusted or changed to prevent this, within the discretion of their psychiatrist. That can be one reason for discontinuing treatment. Another can be a person not having awareness of why they need medication and a lack of self awareness can sometimes be part of a psychiatric disability, depending on the severity of it so its essential to encourage them to know why they need it how it helps and what will happen if they stop it as well as the symptoms it is treating because sometimes people can stop medication believing they don't need it at that point. That happened to me decades ago before my current recovery and these are among the steps that helped me.