Charles "Chuck" Sosebee, Coordinator
California Clients for LPS Reform
4735 Bancroft Street Apt. #6
San Diego, CA 92116-1667
Phone/Fax (619) 284-2543
E-mail [email protected]
California Clients for LPS Reform
The archaic and inhumane Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act must be changed to enable us as a society to compassionately bend down to assist those who are struck by severe mental disorders.
California Clients for LPS Reform is a group of people with mental illness who acknowledge that mental illness is a biological condition and recognize that the current LPS system does not protect them should they become so severely disabled by their illness that they need involuntary help BEFORE they become a danger to self or others.
Today, people are dying in the streets with their rights on. How deplorable! The mental health system can give success and hope—when it is understood and utilized. Involuntary treatment has been portrayed as a civil rights abridgement of people with mental illness. Abuses can occur in any system, but overall more abuse occurs because of lack of treatment.
There is nothing civil about leaving a person suffering on the streets in the name of protecting their rights. The civil rights dogma which permeates our involuntary treatment system denies too many people the recovery that we are so thankful for.
As we go into the 21st Century, it is time to stop this discrimination and bring all people with mental illness to the health that gives them a voice at the table.
Reforming California’s involuntary treatment laws to be more in keeping with the civility and care received by other Californians suffering other illness or disability has at least twelve virtues:
1. It’s education that mental illness is indeed a no-fault-to-the-sufferer condition and that people with mental illness deserve the same level of assistance as would be provided any other person suffering a severe disorder that effects their decisional ability.
2. The quality of life of many clients would improve as their lives became more on an even keel, strengthening their relations with family and friends, and increasing their chances of sustaining meaningful community activities or employment.
3. It would significantly improve the care for the person with mental illness because they would now have lasting relationships with their treatment teams instead of sporadic care by strangers.
4. The reduced hospital expense incurred by revolving door treatment could be deployed to community services for others currently in need.
5. Stigma would be reduced. When treatment is done before danger occurs, the perception of people with mental illness as "dangerous" will be eliminated. The "average Joe" public will no longer associate mental illness with the disheveled homeless person eating out of trash cans. The media will no longer be able to find the "sensational" to report and will have to report instead about recovery.
6. Victimization of people with mental illness such as rape, assault, and financial advantage taking would reduce as people become more able to protect themselves through their own health.
7. It will reduce homelessness.
8. It will reduce criminalization.
9. It will reduce suicide.
10. "Community Assisted Treatment" will reduce the possibility of abuse because the person will be in the community—seen by others—rather then invisible behind closed hospital doors or in jails and prisons.
11. It will give the client more autonomy as the client participates in choices of services to be provided through the treatment plan.
12. Finally, it commits the system to the person. By agreeing to provide the services called for in the treatment plan, it requires the system to provide them.
In conclusion, the time has come that all the clients in California are heard including those of us who know treatment helps and does work.
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