Involuntary Commitment

Your article (July 25), "Easier Steps Urged to Hold the Homeless Mentally Ill," states that "The American Psychiatric Assn. is urging states to make it easier for authorities to involuntarily commit for treatment mentally ill people living in the streets." Though professing to be for the good of the mentally ill, and for society, such laws will accomplish only two things: First, the mentally ill will be deprived of their constitutional rights. Second, the psychiatric community will make a great deal of money.

SAN FRANCISCO - A homeless man plagued by schizophrenia is beaten to death by police in Fullerton. A man from Fort Bragg fixates on aliens for years while denying he is ill, then kills two men before dying in a gunfight with law enforcement. A Nevada County mental health client who had refused additional care storms into a clinic and kills three workers. Those headline grabbers, according to a task force pressing to change the California law that governs involuntary civil commitment to psychiatric hospitals, were merely the most visible signs of a broken system.

SAN FRANCISCO - A homeless man plagued by schizophrenia is beaten to death by police in Fullerton. A man from Fort Bragg fixates on aliens for years while denying he is ill, then kills two men before dying in a gunfight with law enforcement. A Nevada County mental health client who had refused additional care storms into a clinic and kills three workers. Those headline grabbers, according to a task force pressing to change the California law that governs involuntary civil commitment to psychiatric hospitals, were merely the most visible signs of a broken system.

In the best of times and most favorable of circumstances, it's tricky business to identify whether a person who is mentally ill might become violent, so that those in his path can be protected from potential harm and he can get the treatment he needs. FOR THE RECORD: Mental health laws: In the Jan. 11 Section A, an article about identifying potentially violent mentally ill people said that California requires officials to demonstrate that a person has "grave" disability and also poses a danger to himself or others before he can be compelled to get involuntary mental health treatment.

In the best of times and most favorable of circumstances, it's tricky business to identify whether a person who is mentally ill might become violent, so that those in his path can be protected from potential harm and he can get the treatment he needs. FOR THE RECORD: Mental health laws: In the Jan. 11 Section A, an article about identifying potentially violent mentally ill people said that California requires officials to demonstrate that a person has "grave" disability and also poses a danger to himself or others before he can be compelled to get involuntary mental health treatment.

A 39-year-old Minnesota woman said Friday that she would either "be a vegetable or be dead" if she had not been rescued from a state mental hospital by an outsider who learned about her bizarre tale. Judy Cordie, who said she has hired a lawyer to pursue legal recourse, appeared before the House health subcommittee in support of a measure designed to protect the civil liberties of Americans in mental hospitals.

After his wife left him, Richard Hasha couldn't stop pacing, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. He told a friend to take his guns away, and deputies who were called to his home spent hours talking him out of suicide so they could drive him to the hospital for help. "Are you suicidal?" the emergency room doctor asked. "I don't think so," Hasha replied. "The only thing I love more than my wife is life itself."

He was a balding middle-aged man with a long beard, and he lived in a giant flower box on a busy Manhattan street. When he was picked up, dirty and disheveled in the dead of winter and taken to Bellevue Hospital, staff members at the special psychiatric unit for the homeless were pessimistic. He paced the hallways, complaining about his family, medications and the police. He cursed so badly that physicians barred him from group meetings.

A former Community Psychiatric Centers nurse is alleging that managers at the company forged her name on documents that authorized her to help determine if patients were to be involuntarily committed to the company's psychiatric hospitals. During a May 27 hearing before a state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board official, Susan E. Arnett testified that someone had forged her name on documents stating that she had completed a two-hour training session and passed a required written examination.

It was 9:15 on the night of May 27, and Cara Vanni was chatting with a friend on the phone, just like any number of San Clemente teen-agers. Suddenly the line went dead. A minute later, strangers appeared in her bedroom doorway. "My parents brought these three people into my room," Cara, 16, recalled. "At first I thought they were old friends of the family who were about to say they knew me when I was 4. They weren't."

Re "Hiding behind 'free will,' " Opinion, June 10 It is perhaps not so surprising that a physician working in a Venice free clinic and at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine does not know the evolution of the laws relating to involuntary commitment of obviously incapable persons like "William." In a string of cases from the mid-1970s to the mid-'80s, California courts established very stringent limitations on the right of public agencies to commit persons with medical problems of various sorts against their will.

After his wife left him, Richard Hasha couldn't stop pacing, couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. He told a friend to take his guns away, and deputies who were called to his home spent hours talking him out of suicide so they could drive him to the hospital for help. "Are you suicidal?" the emergency room doctor asked. "I don't think so," Hasha replied. "The only thing I love more than my wife is life itself."

A former Community Psychiatric Centers nurse is alleging that managers at the company forged her name on documents that authorized her to help determine if patients were to be involuntarily committed to the company's psychiatric hospitals. During a May 27 hearing before a state Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board official, Susan E. Arnett testified that someone had forged her name on documents stating that she had completed a two-hour training session and passed a required written examination.

He was a balding middle-aged man with a long beard, and he lived in a giant flower box on a busy Manhattan street. When he was picked up, dirty and disheveled in the dead of winter and taken to Bellevue Hospital, staff members at the special psychiatric unit for the homeless were pessimistic. He paced the hallways, complaining about his family, medications and the police. He cursed so badly that physicians barred him from group meetings.

A 39-year-old Minnesota woman said Friday that she would either "be a vegetable or be dead" if she had not been rescued from a state mental hospital by an outsider who learned about her bizarre tale. Judy Cordie, who said she has hired a lawyer to pursue legal recourse, appeared before the House health subcommittee in support of a measure designed to protect the civil liberties of Americans in mental hospitals.

California is about to get tough on involuntary commitment for the mentally ill. It's about time too. But before any legal reform, county mental health officials want to hear from you. Two public forums on the subject are next week in Anaheim and Orange. TV gives us a skewered picture on involuntary commitment. Money-grubbing relatives want a rich uncle sent to a sanitarium because he's a little eccentric. The court commits him over his vigorous protests, while relatives divide the spoils.