LUCKY SEVERSON: This is a retreat near Knoxville, Tennessee.

Once a meeting place for the civil rights movement, this day, it is the site of a conference of people claiming another right. A controversial one -- the right, they say, of the mentally ill not to be forced to have treatment.

DAVID OAKS (Former Patient): For several hundred years, mental patients have been killed, oppressed, locked up, lobotomized. It's only been in the last 30 years that psychiatric survivors themselves have been organizing, fighting back.

LEONARD ROY FRANK (Former Patient): Today, we have persecution of mental patients. In the Middle Ages, there was an inquisition that persecuted witches.

SEVERSON: They call themselves "psychiatric survivors." Most have been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, or manic depressive.

They're here to fight against a wave of new laws that can force the mentally ill to get treatment in their homes and neighborhoods, whether they want it or not.

A lot of these new laws are fashioned after one in New York called Kendra's Law. Kendra Webdale was killed in January 1999 when she was pushed in front of a subway by a mentally ill man named Andrew Goldstein. He was not taking his medication at the time. Hence, Kendra's Law.

Before Kendra's Law, states could hospitalize people whose actions showed they were a danger to themselves or others. The new laws say the mentally ill can be forced to get treatment in their communities if doctors think they might become dangerous.

MR. OAKS: Where you are on the forced drugging issue depends which side of the needle you're on and we've been on the sharp end of the needle

SEVERSON: Darcy Gruttadaro is an attorney at the National Alliance of the Mentally Ill. NAMI, as it's known, is a voice for families of the mentally ill.

DARCY GRUTTADARO (National Alliance of the Mentally Ill): We're talking about individuals who have not, who are not interested in voluntary treatment. They've refused over a period of time to participate. They are showing signs that they are deteriorating.

SEVERSON: Dr. E. Fuller Torrey helped write Kendra's Law. He is a psychiatrist who studies human brains for signs of schizophrenia and head of the treatment advocacy center in Arlington, Virginia. But he is not held in high regard by the people who consider themselves survivors.

(to Dr. Torrey): I met a few days ago outside of Knoxville with a number of former mental patients -- they call themselves survivors. They have become activists, and for them, you are not the most popular person around.

DR. E. FULLER TORREY (Treatment Advocacy Center): Oh, I think that's being very kind actually. I'm very aware of that.

SEVERSON: Dr. Torrey thinks Kendra's Law is long overdue, that society needs to be protected from violent mental patients.

DR. TORREY: There's absolutely no question that people with severe mental illnesses who are not on medication, I emphasize, not on medication, are more dangerous than the general population.

Until we treat people who need to be treated, we're going to continue to have these acts of violence, like Andrew Goldstein -- like the fellow that came in and shot up the Capitol.

SEVERSON: But critics, like Sally Zinman, an activist for the mentally ill, charge that Dr. Torrey is perpetrating a myth. More fiction than fact, according to a recent University of Virginia study.

SALLY ZINMAN (Activist): All the research that has been done says that people with mental disabilities, psychiatric disabilities, mental illness, are no more violent than the general population, the latest research says, with the exception of when you start mixing in drugs and alcohol.

SEVERSON: No one ever accused Judy Koczar of being a danger to society, but she's forced to take medication and attend counseling under Kendra's Law. Judy was sexually abused by a family member. She's dangerous, but only to herself. She says cutting or burning herself used to be the only way she could express her feelings.

JUDY KOCZAR: In a way, they did push me in the right direction. But I wasn't a violent person and that's what Kendra's Law was for. And that's not who I am. I would never hurt anybody else. It scares people into treatment and you're talking about mental health recipients and I don't think that they should be scared. You shouldn't treat people like that.

SEVERSON: She says if good treatment was available, mentally ill people would seek it, voluntarily. And she is not alone.

MS. ZINMAN: You wouldn't have these struggles if you gave them what they want. People don't go to a restaurant with bad food or food that's going to kill them or poison but if you give them good food they're going to go.

SEVERSON (to Dr. Torrey): Andrew Goldstein, the fellow who pushed Kendra onto the subway tracks, in fact, he had been seeking help?