He was convinced that someone at his gym had poisoned his water bottle. As her son’s paranoid delusions grew worse, Candy DeWitt tried for more than three years to get him involuntarily committed. The 26-year-old Alameda man is now finally getting the intensive treatment that he needs at Napa State Hospital — but only after killing someone while in the midst of a psychotic episode.
Patricia Fontana-Narell’s son was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was a junior at UC Berkeley. Now 31, he’s spent much of the last eight years homeless, sometimes sleeping on heating grates near the campus where he once attended classes.
Since both men were adults, it was their legal right to refuse treatment, which, not being of sound mind, they did. Well-intended laws meant to protect mentally ill people have, in some cases, had the exact opposite effect. Their families had no power to intervene and stop their downward spiral.
Frustrated with a broken mental health system, the mothers, one from Alameda, the other from Berkeley, spearheaded a movement to pass Laura’s Law in Alameda County.
The law allows for assisted court-ordered outpatient treatment for people over 18 with severe mental disorders who aren’t able to make rational decisions.
Individual counties have to opt into the statewide law for it to go into effect locally. And in Alameda County, as in other parts of the state, there has been strong opposition from some groups who claim it violates people’s rights. The law is named after Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old college student who in 2001 was fatally shot at a mental health care clinic in Nevada County by a severely mentally ill man who had refused his family’s efforts to persuade him to get medical treatment.
The law’s intent is to devise a humane alternative to the current inhumane status quo, where very sick people are being left to their own devices. You can see them on the street shouting at invisible demons or sleeping under cardboard boxes.
There is no intervention unless a mentally ill person commits a violent act or engages in some other behavior that gets him arrested. When that happens, they either are taken to the psychiatric hospital on a 72-hour emergency hold or to jail where we shamelessly warehouse our mentally ill.
In Alameda County, 900 people are involuntarily committed on emergency “5150” holds every month. But just as soon as they are deemed to no longer pose an immediate danger to themselves or others, they’re turned right back out onto the streets.
On Tuesday, in a surprising and welcome turn of events, Alameda County supervisors unanimously approved a five-slot pilot program of Laura’s Law, which will go into effect in June 2016. Thanks to the leadership of Supervisor Wilma Chan, Alameda now joins 14 counties statewide, including Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Mateo, that are in various stages of implementing the law.
Supporters of the law, including Steve Bischoff, executive director of the Mental Health Association of Alameda County, weren’t happy that the pilot will only include five people, saying the sample size is too small to determine whether the pilot is effective. They will be working to expand that number. But at least it’s a start.
The law applies only to a hard-to-reach group of mentally ill people who are in serious crisis, deteriorating and refusing treatment. It allows family members, partners, police and other designated individuals to petition a judge to order someone into assisted outpatient treatment. That person is represented in a hearing by a public defender. An individual can’t be forced to take medication. But the involvement of a judge and intensive casework can help persuade some mentally ill people.
“Our tragedy did not need to happen,” DeWitt said. “And now with Laura’s Law in Alameda County, we finally have a tool that will offer the ability to get help for our loved ones and our most severely mentally ill before a crisis.”
Fontana-Narell said it took countless emails, opinion pieces and on-the-ground organizing to build a coalition of family members, first responders, elected officials, black clergy, merchants and others in the community to get the law passed after a three-year battle.
“I’m not saying this a fix for everything, but I know it’s going to save lives,” Fontana-Narell said. “To me it’s just a step toward a whole cascade of change that needs to happen in the mental health system.”
Tammerlin Drummond is a columnist for the Bay Area News Group. Her column runs Thursday and Sunday. Contact her at tdrummond@bayareanewsgroup.com, or follow her at Twitter.com/tammerlin.
