State Bar Past President Gary L. Bakke courageously revealed his personal experience with mental illness in the December 2000 Wisconsin Lawyer. He described how, with assistance, he recognized his depression, sought treatment, and is fine today, as a result. This excellent example is what the Treatment Advocacy Center refers to in the Model Law for Assisted Treatment "Statement of Purpose":

"People with treated mental illness can now reclaim their lives. But first there must be treatment. … Treatment voluntarily embraced is always preferable."

The primary purpose of the Model Law, however, is to be: "the legal framework for the provisions of care to individuals who, due to the symptoms of severe mental illness, become either too dangerous or incapable of making informed medical decisions concerning their treatment."

Treatment includes medication and, ideally, psychiatric counseling, and individual or group therapy. If treatment is involuntary, to ensure compliance, medication often initially is administered during brief hospitalization. In a compelling "Introduction," the Center states that "assisted treatment" essentially fosters treatment compliance in the community through a court-ordered treatment plan. The courts commit the patient to the treatment system and the system to the patient. In the most recent comprehensive published study to date, long-term assisted outpatient treatment reduced hospital admissions by 57 percent, in general, and by 72 percent for people with psychotic disorders. And, when such treatment was combined with outpatient services, the probability of violence was reduced by 50 percent.

The Model Law proposes an efficient system of assisted treatment petitions, hearings, and appeals that relies upon a judicially empowered Psychiatric Treatment Board, which consists of a physician (preferably a psychiatrist), a lawyer, and a recipient of treatment or a close relative of such a person. Voluntary and emergency treatments are provided for and law enforcement is involved. This Model Law is "cautiously considered," combining "the most effective provisions of existing state laws," by placing "each of the best available components into a statutory model better than any currently in effect." Its provisions for protecting "the rights and well-being of those placed in assisted treatment" also are "more extensive and vigilant than those now in place anywhere in the nation."

Given medical advances, the Model Law is "needed to prevent repeated hospitalizations" and "consequences of nontreatment," including homelessness, incarceration, suicide, victimization, violent tendencies, and needless suffering. Mental illnesses are biologically-based diseases that attack the brain and now can be treated effectively, like many other diseases, with daily medication and, when necessary, therapy. It is certainly in the best interest of society for states to seriously consider adopting this Model law.

The book has a crisp, well-written format, with useful clarifying comments throughout.

Donna M. Jones, U.W. 1978, is a member of the Participation of Women in the Law Committee and a past member of the State Bar Board of Governors.

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