The Globe’s commendable coverage of the mental health crisis in Massachusetts highlights some horrific acts of violence by people with untreated mental illness (“The desperate and the dead’’). It bears repeating that most people with mental illness are not violent, and most violence is not committed by people with mental illness. Nevertheless, the Globe correctly notes that when people with mental illness do not get the help they need, they often drift “away from therapy and medications, often into the grip of alcohol or drugs, [and] the risk of violence sharply escalates.’’

Assisted outpatient treatment, also called involuntary outpatient commitment, is available in 46 states, but not in Massachusetts. Properly administered, such treatment can mandate comprehensive mental health services to people who may be mentally competent, but whose mental illness is complicated by refusal of treatment, frequent relapses, multiple hospitalizations or incarcerations, and, often, by behaviors that are dangerous to oneself or others.

In contrast, the complex “Rogers guardianship’’ available in Massachusetts focuses narrowly on involuntary administration of antipsychotic medication to people who are adjudicated to be mentally incompetent.

In December 2015, the American Psychiatric Association concluded, “Involuntary outpatient commitment programs have demonstrated their effectiveness when systematically implemented, linked to intensive outpatient services, and prescribed for extended periods of time.’’ Clearly, Massachusetts must increase funding for outpatient mental health care, but it should also pass legislation on assisted outpatient treatment. Doing so would help save livelihoods — and lives.

Dr. Ronald W. Pies

Lexington

The writer is a psychiatrist affiliated with Tufts University and SUNY Upstate Medical University; the views expressed here are his own.