L.A. BOARD OF SUPERVISORS ENDORSES LPS REFORM!!
The Los Angeles Board of Supervisors has voted to support Helen Thomsons measure to reform the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act ("LPS"). In fact, the Board has not only adopted the legislation in theory, but will also be actively lobbying for it as well.
We thank the entire LA Board and most especially LA Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who has long worked to improve LPS.
IN FOR THE LONG HAUL
The Bill is being changed from a "two year" bill to a "one year" bill and is therefore on the regular legislative schedule. Thus, it will not have to move through the Assembly in the month of January and will be on the regular legislative schedule. Some in the legislature apparently felt that a measure of such importance could not be properly considered in the limited time that the fast track would have allowed.
As a consequence, Helen Thomsons reforms will be given a new bill number. It is now AB1800. Any correspondence you write to legislators must include this number. The old one will no longer have relevance for most legislators. The bill is now on the regular legislative schedule of one-year bills.
Does this change what we must do? No--it only changes the timing of when we must do what we must do to reform LPS. For instance, please hold off on writing to the committee chairs and members whose addresses we previously gave you. We are not yet sure that those committees are the ones to which the bill will be assigned. Please concentrate on your own representatives.
Most importantly, we now have more time to get our message to the public and to the legislators. But then so do our opponents.
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MORE EDITORIAL SUPPORT
Ventura County Star (Ventura County, Ca.)
January 2, 2000, Sunday
Editorial
Making it easier to help the sick
Although well-meaning, state law makes it too hard to treat the mentally ill.
If you are in an automobile accident and lose consciousness, should paramedics be able to
whisk you immediately to a hospital for repairs to your damaged body? Or should they be
forced to stand around until you regain consciousness and give them permission to act, or
until a judge can be persuaded to rule that confining you without your consent in the
emergency room is necessary to save your life?
We take it for granted that when we are injured in accidents or struck down by serious
illness we will be provided medical care, even if the nature of the injury or illness
makes it impossible for us to ask for help. Yet under California law, that same
consideration generally is denied to people who suffer from one category of illness:
severe mental disorders.
Laws intended to safeguard the civil rights of people suffering from such maladies as
schizophrenia, clinical depression, bipolar disorder and dementia make it almost
impossible to compel medical treatment or confinement. There is noble intent at the root
of such laws; history is replete with tales of people locked up "for their own
good" by relatives or strangers whose motives were less than admirable. In a nation
that values personal liberty above all else, preventing involuntary confinement is a
fundamental public interest.
In California, the law making it very difficult to treat or hold the mentally ill without
their permission, the Lanterman-Petris-Short act, dates from 1967. Although it was
motivated by true concern for individual rights, the law operates from presumptions about
the nature of mental illness that subsequent scientific advances have shown to be deeply
flawed. It is in need of revision, of the sort promised by new legislation awaiting
lawmakers this month when they return from the holidays.
In effect, the LPS act prohibits anyone -- family member, police officer, doctor -- from
pulling a mentally ill individual off the street, unless that person is deemed to pose a
threat to himself or others. Even when that determination is made, the law provides for
only a 72-hour hold for observation, which can be extended a maximum of 14 days if the
threat persists. Involuntary commitment beyond that requires a lengthy, heavily
bureaucratized process of hearings and paperwork, with the scales tipped decidedly against
confinement.
In practice, this law -- which emptied the state's mental hospitals -- condemns the
seriously disturbed and their families to life on a terrifying treadmill. Because severe
mental disorders impair the very faculties required to make rational decisions about
treatment, it is nearly impossible to obtain consent from someone in a delusional state.
Families must stand helplessly by while a loved one stops taking stabilizing medication,
deteriorates and arrives at a crisis. At that point, the police may intervene, sometimes
with tragic results.
The bill amending the LPS Act, AB 1028, would streamline the hearing process, allow
slightly longer periods of involuntary confinement for those deemed dangerous, and expand
the criteria used to determine whether a patient is gravely disabled and therefore
eligible for mandatory treatment. It would also appropriate $350 million to provide the
necessary community services.
That last may be a major sticking point, given the governor's reluctance to authorize
major new spending. Nevertheless, the changes wrought by AB 1028 are necessary and
respectful of the delicate balance between civil liberty and societal self-protection. It
deserves quick approval.
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California Treatment Advocacy Coalition
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