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The Desert Sun

March 28, 2000

Reprinted with permission.  Copyright 2000 The Desert Sun.  All rights reserved.

System’s Gaps Can Endanger Some of County’s Mentally Ill

By Francesca Donlan

Sloane Lenox Pettit walked out of a locked psychiatric treatment facility in Indio two weeks ago with no money, no extra clothes and no medication. She stuck out her thumb on Highway 111 and hitchhiked to Mexico.

Her parents, Palm Springs residents Tom and Lynn Pettit, spent long, terrifying days putting up fliers, making phone calls and looking under bushes in the desert for their daughter’s body.

Six days after her disappearance, she called them from a small town near the Mexican border. Tom Pettit found his 35-year-old daughter sitting in a jail cell in San Luis, Ariz. She was dirty, had a few Mexican coins in her pocket and was wearing a man’s shirt.

"There were men involved," he said. "I don’t know whether she sold her body, her soul or what to get their support, but she had no money."

Under current mental health laws, Sloane Pettit had every legal right to leave the hospital and head for Mexico, despite an eight-year history of acute mental illness. She entered the Mental Health Rehabilitation Center involuntarily because the courts determined she could not take care of herself.

Sloane Pettit has schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder, according to mental health reports. She has been hospitalized for mental health issues 69 times in five years.

Evaluation: During her one-year reassessment hearing, the courts reversed their decision. Sloane Pettit was able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she could care for herself. As a result, Sloane Pettit decided to walk out the door on March 13.

There is no legal requirement or provisions for any additional mental health care after a patient is released from involuntary detention.

Mental health laws are currently being challenged in Sacramento. Advocates of mental-health-care reform want patients like Sloane Pettit off the streets and into treatment programs.

Free to leave: Mental health laws make it difficult for patients to receive involuntary treatment unless they are homicidal, suicidal or gravely disabled, which means they cannot feed, clothe or house themselves. Even for patients who meet the criteria, many are able to leave the system because of wide civil rights laws.

For people who don’t fall into those categories, getting the right treatment is an uphill battle.

A bill -- AB 1800 -- being heard in Sacramento this week is aimed at making it easier for the mentally ill to get treatment.

Falling through the cracks: "There are many, many Sloane Pettits who fall through the cracks and aren’t getting the care they need," said Dr. Elmo Lee, psychiatrist at Milestones Board and Care for the Mentally Ill in Indio. "The mental health system is a juggling act between providing care for those unable to make their own decisions vs. their rights to refuse treatment and assistance. She exercised her right against the best interest of herself."

The criteria for involuntarily holding a patient is extreme, he said. Many people are not homicidal, suicidal or gravely disabled, but need serious treatment.

"Many are less capable of handling life and work, but are not sick enough to be cared for against their will," Lee said. "That kind of dilemma exists in every system -- she fell through the cracks."

Sloane Pettit was receiving care at Mental Health Rehabilitation Center -- a locked program for individuals suffering acute mental disorders -- because she had been in a conservatorship, which is a forced retention mandated by the judicial system. She had been diagnosed as gravely disabled. She left MHRC because the courts determined that she was no longer gravely disabled, terminated her conservatorship and allowed her to leave the facility. She has returned again as a patient.

"None of us wanted her to be off conservatorship," Tom Pettit said. "Her doctors, her social workers, her treatment team, her mom, her dad -- we knew she was sick."

Tom Pettit, ironically, is vice-chairman of the Desert Region Mental Health Advisory Board and a member of the California Treatment Advocacy Coalition.

Happier Days: Sloane Pettit didn’t always struggle with mental illness. She graduated from Palm Springs High School in 1982 and was the outstanding female athlete in her senior class.

Ten years later, after two degrees from the University of California at Berkeley, and jobs including a paralegal in a large law firm,>rem 0< her mental state began to decline. In 1992, she lost the ability to manage money, and she began hearing voices. She made her first trip to the emergency room and has been in the mental health system ever since.

Tom Pettit blames that system, which includes the County Counsel’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office, and the Public Guardian’s Office, for the mistakes that sent his daughter hitchhiking down Highway 111.

Fighting the system: Tom Freeman, director of public affairs for 4th District Supervisor Roy Wilson’s office, was alerted when Sloane Pettit went missing. Freeman has spoken and met with Tom Pettit on numerous occasions.

"It is a gut-wrenching set of events," Freeman said. "I was devastated because this is exactly what Tom and his wife were afraid of and what we hoped to prevent. I was praying that she wasn’t killed, raped or beaten."

Freeman intends to meet with Pettit and Wilson on this issue and find out if they can advocate a bill bent on changing the current legislation.

"With as much resources as Supervisor Wilson has to help people, this is a very frustrating case," Freeman said.

Larry Ogilvie, program chief of the Department of Mental Health in Riverside County, admits the system has some problems.

"It’s very hard to prove that someone is gravely disabled without a reasonable doubt," he said.

Once you are in court, the county counsel is on one side and the public defender is on the other, he said. One expert agrees the patient is gravely disabled and another disagrees -- that raises a reasonable doubt.

"The intent of the law was good when it was passed so many years ago, but the pendulum has swung the other way and some get caught in the swing," he said. "That’s why people are on the street on their own who are obviously mentally ill are free to go. They’re dirty and disheveled, talking to themselves, but no one will lock them up."

He understands the Pettits’ frustration.

"There are these holes, and she was able to slip through," he said. "We are doing the best we can."

Sloane Pettit could be released again soon.

"We may be back in some kind of revolving door," he said. "You create reasonable doubt and you’re back to the client being released again. Courts lean in the direction of granting freedom. It’s frustrating if you’re the parents of a mentally ill patient."

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