WHEN FOLLOWING AN ORDER WOULD BE WRONG

ON MARCH 15, 1997, Michael Freeman did something crazy. He jumped into the
back seat of a stranger's car at a Hamilton gas station.

``I was a little delusional about colours,'' he recalls. ``I had this theory
that the colours of street signs, the colours of what people were wearing,
were somehow trying to communicate a message to me.''

The message was that somehow, someone was going to pick him up and drive him
to a location where Freeman would begin his life anew. That's when he saw
the silver car - a car he believed, based on its colour alone, held special
significance. So he jumped in ``and waited for the people to come and drive
me away.

``Naturally,'' he says, ``they didn't do that.''

There was a scuffle. The police were called. He ran. The officers ran after
him. Freeman and one police officer struggled; he grabbed the officer's gun
and a shot was fired into the ground. The cop started yelling: ``He's got my
weapon! He's got my gun!'' Another officer came running, pulling his
semi-automatic from its holster.

Freeman ran toward him, holding the first officer's gun. The second officer
squeezed off several shots. Freeman dropped to the ground.

``I was hit three times in the arm, once in the butt and once in the face,''
he says. ``And the face one was a very close call, actually. But no
permanent damage, just a little scarring.

``It was a pretty intense night, needless to say.''

What the officers did not realize, what Freeman did not realize, was that he
was delusional.

Freeman was charged with 10 criminal offences, including attempted murder.
He faced a lengthy recovery from his wounds. And he now faces an
indeterminate amount of time in the forensics division of the mental health
system.

All of this, some say, could have been avoided if only Freeman had been
taking his medication. Even the judge referred to the havoc created by
Freeman's apparent non-compliance.

At the trial this year, Mr. Justice Nick Borkovich, of the Ontario court,
general division, suggested the need for legislation ``which indicates that
when a person has been declared to suffer from a major mental illness (and
has been released from hospital) that conditions may have to be attached to
that: the condition that he may have to report back to the facility from
which he was freed in order to require him to take his medicine.''

Although Borkovich did not use the term, he was referring to community
treatment orders.

``I was a bit worried that, with my case I would become kind of a
poster-child for these community treatment orders,'' Freeman admits.

Not likely.

Because, for Freeman, the contentious legislation would have made no
difference. He had been taking his prescribed medications. But they were the
wrong ones. ``I had been misdiagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic,'' he
says. ``So, as a result, they had me on various medications that weren't
dealing with the problem.''

After the shooting, his delusional disorder was properly diagnosed and he
was placed on a different treatment regimen. His delusions disappeared. He
now sounds lucid, intelligent. The brain that made him a successful
freelance writer is clearly intact.

Juries in several high-profile inquests over the past decade - including the
1997 inquest into the shooting of Ottawa sportscaster Brian Smith - have
called for treatment order legislation. For the small percentage of
seriously mentally ill people who become violent toward themselves or
others, an appealing - though perhaps simplistic - case can be made for
treatment orders.

A potentially violent person with a mental illness may indeed comply with an
order, remain stable and pose no threat to themselves or others. In which
case, community treatment orders have achieved the desired result. But the
small minority who do commit violent acts generally have a history of
violence and are usually involved with alcohol or substance abuse. A
biweekly injection does nothing to solve a subtance abuse problem.

And aside from them? The vast majority of those with a mental illness who do
not meet the criteria for hospital admission under the Mental Health Act
should have the same rights and freedoms as other members of the community.

In some of the 37 U.S. states where treatment-order laws are in place,
legislators have tried to make the law highly selective. Orders apply only
to those whose ``deterioration would predictably result in dangerousness.''

But who are they?

Herbert Cheong, who pushed Charlene Minkowski to her death in front of
aToronto subway train, had a history of substance abuse. He had also
committed a violent robbery in the past. Since these are both solid
indicators of a risk for potential violence (just as they are for people
with no diagnosis of mental illness), he may well have qualified for a
limited treatment order intended specifically to prevent violence.

But Jeffrey Arenburg, who shot sportscaster Smith in 1995, would not have
qualified under the rules in most areas that allow treatment orders. He had
been in hospital briefly just once in the four years preceding his crime.

``We need to have as well-oiled a system as possible: we need to continually
look at those things, says Dr. Clive Chamberlain, with the Centre for
Addiction and Mental Health. ``But I think anybody who expects bad things to
stop happening is not really on this planet.'' Treatment orders ``may be an
ingredient in a well-thought-out system, but they are not going to be a
panacea.''

Checked-by: Don Beck