Let's start a topic of debate. If you have a mental health issue, do you think it should be compulsory to medicate it?
Just to take your topic and steer it onto a slightly different course for one moment:
Exactly how much weight should the courts and legal system put into mental health and conditions of accused criminals?
I mean, a convicted paedophile is scum, but they clearly have some sort of psychological disorder which has made this person resort to acting the way they do, and while it mitigates the circumstances in a small way (just ask the relatives of the victims), exactly how much importance should be put on an accused and/or convicted criminal's state of mind at the time of the crime?
Using Rolf Harris as an example, he molested children, as that is abhorrent.
However, he must have some problems which moulded him into the man he is/was when he abused those children, and while it is not an excuse, can it really be ignored? Or can it really mitigate the circumstances to such a degree that his sentence should be shortened because of it?
A lot of legal systems now focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment; if a criminal has some psychological issue, causing them to lash out and behave inappropriately, they cannot really be completely of their own faculty, and as such, under the rule of law, cannot really be held completely accountable for their crimes - therefore, their punishment should take that into account.
Or is the case to be argued against it simply that every criminal has some sort of psychological imbalance, and therefore nobody would get the same sentence for the same crime, making consistency in the law impossible?
Under the eyes of many legal systems, a man who kills in cold blood is seen in a very similar way to a man who kills in self-defence. Is this right - ethically and/or morally?
