With the best of intentions decades ago, this nation freed the mentally ill from the institutions that held them, on the theory that these people would lead happier lives outside.

With the best of intentions also, in the 1960s and 1970s, the states severely restricted the ability of government to force treatment upon a person who did not want it; people could be "force-treated" only when they were an imminent danger to themselves or society.

We had seen too much of innocents locked up for years against their will in institutions that were sometimes barbarous and ultimately unhelpful. Hard-digging exposes such at the movie "The Titticut Follies" showed us a world that looked very much like Hell: people isolated, ignored, deprived, naked, abject and forever lost.

We quite rightly said "No!" to all of that. But in its place, we created another sort of Hell: a place where the mentally ill were left to fend for themselves in the gutters, along the rivers, down the dark alleys and along the back streets of our communities, sometimes half-starved, half-frozen and easy prey to those who would rob, beat, rape and sometimes murder. "We must protect their constitutional rights," we declared while denying treatment, but often what we really protected was our right to ignore them.

Also, we traded the jail for the hospital. This is what we now call the criminalization of the mentally ill. The police, ill-equipped in training and facilities, replaced the nurses; and another social tragedy was born.

A pamphlet from the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Va., reports that in 1999, the federal Department of Justice estimated that as much as 16 percent of the jail-prison population consisted of the mentally ill.

In Nevada, as elsewhere, we are at last beginning to correct course. The state Legislature has authorized more funds for out-patient treatment, the Mental Health Institute is expanding this treatment, PACT programs have been started to provide intense outpatient assistance and the Washoe jail has a mental unit.

Still, we continue to insist that unless these people pose an imminent danger, we will not treat them unless they want to be treated. But by and large, these people do not know they are sick. Research of the past few years concludes that they suffer not from denial but from anosognosia, a biologically based symptom which quite literally prevents them from understanding that they are ill.

At least 40 percent of people with schizophrenia and manic-depressive illnesses suffer from anosognosia. They are in a real Catch 22, unable to ask for help from people forbidden to help them unless they ask.

How do we get out this mess? Well, here comes a model law from the Treatment Advocacy Center - a law geared at protecting the rights of the mentally ill while at the same time permitting "assisted" treatment for those who do not understand that they have an illness.

The various parts of the law are based upon laws already in effect somewhere in the United States, with extra protections added.

This law permits intervention for a person incapable of making an informed medical decision if that person is:

Chronically disabled: People with symptomatic mental illness defined in the light of past psychiatric history (which would include previous non-compliance with treatment), current likelihood of treatment compliance, and the risk of deterioration without treatment.

Gravely disabled: A person so incapacitated by mental illness as to lose the ability to provide for his or her basic needs, including food, shelter and sometimes medical care.

Extra protection includes a psychiatric treatment board, replacing a judge who might have little experience in mental illness (composed of a lawyer, a physician and a person who has experienced mental illness personally or through a close relative).

A treatment plan is mandated for a person being discharged from assisted treatment. Under certain circumstances, relatives may take part in the treatment proceeding, with the right to counsel, present evidence, cross-examine witnesses and appeal.

The mentally ill person has the right to a formal grievance procedure through the specific facility's medical director and, if necessary, the psychiatric treatment board. When an inpatient on medications, he/she must be examined every 30 days by an independent physician or psychiatrist.

There is more, but this gives you the idea.

It is time to consider this approach. After all, we make decisions for children. We make decisions for the senile elderly. Why should we not, under a high degree of protection, make them also for the unaware mentally ill rather than leave them living lives on the edge of existence - especially now that an array of new medicines makes treatment so much more effective? That is a question that the Nevada Legislature should consider very seriously, with this model law before it.

Those who wish to read the entire law and other material can do so at www.psychlaws.org.