Reply to Family of six killed by depressed and suicidal 19-year-old

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[quote=Anonymous]I used to defend clients against involuntary commitments and later as the state’s attorney I was the advocate seeking involuntary commitments. I know a lot about the system which is different from state to state but has a lot of uniform best practices that most states follow.

Involuntary holds initiated by medical professionals at the behest of law enforcement or family members last only days - usually around 72 hours - and may be lengthened only after a court hearing with counsel appointed for the subject of the hold. Even if a longer involuntary hold is authorized by the court it is usually limited to a set period of time and must be further reviewed by the court if a longer commitment is sought by medical professionals. In my experience the longer holds are rarely sought in the absence of a criminal act having been committed by the mentally ill person -  and from what I’ve seen that’s usually because the resources just aren’t there. I can’t tell you how many suicidal people I’ve seen discharged from care within two weeks because the bed was needed by someone else. In theory the patient gets aftercare in the community, but in reality that often doesn’t happen.

The problem with the mental health system in the USA is that it is horrifically under resourced. AND, we have an abhorrent history of abusing the mentally ill, and of people who weren’t actually mentally ill being involuntarily committed and subject to terrible abuses - ‘difficult’ people whose families didn’t want to deal with them. In that respect the very strong protections of persons in the commitment system are well justified, but those protections coupled with a terribly broken community based mental healthcare system creates the perfect storm for the horrors we often see perpetrated by people experiencing UNSTABLE mental illness. (I emphasize unstable for the posters who keep trying to argue that mentally ill people are harmless and less than 1% engage in violence - very naive and wrong statements that ignore an extensive body of evidence studied exhaustively by mental health professionals all over the country.)[/quote]

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