John M. Grohol, Psy.D., in his article "The Double Standard of Forced Treatment", says "Forced treatment for people with mental illness has had a long and abusive history, both here in the United States and throughout the world. No other medical specialty has the rights psychiatry and psychology do to take away a person's freedom in order to help "treat" that person. Historically, the profession has suffered from abusing this right — so much so that reform laws in the 1970s and 1980s took the profession's right away from them to confine people against their will. Such forced treatment now requires a judge's signature. But over time, that judicial oversight — which is supposed to be the check in our checks-and-balance system — has largely become a rubber stamp to whatever the doctor thinks is best. The patient's voice once again threatens to become silenced, now under the guise of "assisted outpatient treatment" (just a modern, different term for forced treatment)."