Refusing to take medication

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I also think we chased off the OP. I think one issue is that the OP sounds like a helicopter parent who is having a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that her child is now a legal adult. It's likely that the son doesn't like the medication because of a side effect males can get with SSRI's where they develop breast tissue. I think the OP probably could benefit from counseling to learn to let go more when it comes to the adult son, as too much hovering is going to hurt more in the long run. Someone I grew up with was raised by a helicopter parent, and that person has had a difficult time adjusting to adult life because he was never allowed to do things on his own. He was born legally blind, but the way he was raised further disabled him because there are plenty of others like him who live independently and have a stable income they earn through working.

I wouldn't be so sure that this mom is over-protective/overly controlling.

What have we been told about this young man's development -- his cognitive, emotional, and functional skill levels and needs? We have been told he's 18 but being 18 doesn't really mean anything except that you've been alive for 18 revolutions of the earth around the sun..... OP's son might need enough support and supervision to be under legal guardianship as an adult.

I probably wouldn't support the OP's decision to secretly medicate her son against his will even if he is under guardianship and has difficulty with decision-making ..... I tend to think that unless it is (or will quickly become) a matter of life or death and there are no alternatives and the person cannot understand the consequences of refusing treatment even with lots of support and education, everyone should have the right to refuse medication regardless of age or mental disability.....

But I don't think that secretly forcing someone to take medication automatically makes a person bad or evil.....what if you had a small child with a serious infection who needed to take antibiotics but had no understanding of why and couldn't be made to do so -- no flavoring was acceptable to them, they spat the medicine out if you even managed to get it into their mouth, you had to get at least one other adult to help you to chase them down and hold them still to try to get the medicine in their mouth, and they screamed and cried and fought and were clearly terrified and confused by the whole situation......and the only alternative to oral medication would be to drag them to the doctor for injections (also terrifying and confusing), or just let them get sick enough that they needed to be hospitalized and could suffer serious physical damage or even die? Wouldn't it be better, in fact less harmful, to just hide their medicine in some ice cream or something? Some adults have as much understanding of the need to take antibiotics as the small child in my example (and some of those adults are autistic) so the same example could apply to an adult.

SSRI's are not antibiotics, and I'm guessing the OP's son has at least some ability to understand the need for medication, in general, if he can state he believes there's nothing wrong with him..... but my point is that it's not a black and white issue; Evil murderers and rapists and otherwise bad/sketchy/malicious people are not the only people who would ever hide medicine in another person's food.