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Mental Health Law

The Never-Never Land of Mental Health Law: A Review of Legal Rights of Youth Committed by Their Parents to Psychiatric Facilities in California

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I. HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE AND REASONS FOR RISE IN PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALIZATION

The minors who are most frequently inappropriately hospitalized are described as "trouble makers," status offenders, or beyond parental control.3 These children are classified by California Welfare and Institution section 601 (hereinafter § 601). Pursuant to this provision minors who violate truancy, curfew or runaway laws, or who are disobedient or unruly, may become wards of the court.4 When this happens, a minor is supervised by a juvenile probation officer either within the home or in an unlocked out-of-home placement facility. Prior to the enactment of § 601, these minors could be placed in a locked juvenile hall by their parents or the police. Both before and after the enactment of the § 601 system, parents with appropriate insurance or financial resources have been able to place their children in locked psychiatric hospitals. Recently, however, hospitalization has become a burgeoning practice.5 A number of possible

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Statewide Law Enforcement | Mental Health Efforts

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Introduction

Nationwide, law enforcement agencies in rapidly increasing numbers have embraced specialized policing responses (SPRs, pronounced “spurs”) to people with mental illnesses. These efforts, which prioritize treatment over incarceration when appropriate, are planned and implemented in partnership with community service providers and citizens. The two most prevalent SPR approaches are Crisis Intervention Teams (CITs) and police-mental health co.-responder teams. CITs, pioneered by the Memphis (TN) Police Department, draw on a self-selected cadre of officers trained to identify signs and symptoms of mental illness, to de-escalate any situation involving an individual who appears to have a mental illness, and to connect that person in crisis to treatment. The second approach, co-responder teams, forged by the Los Angeles (CA) Police Department and San Diego County (CA) Sheriff’s Department, pairs officers with mental health professionals to respond to calls involving people in or combined these strategies, but a common...

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The Challenge to Mental Health and the Law, Part 1 Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy

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The Facts and the Future

The basic thesis of the psychoanalytic psychiatrist, and I am still one, is that in order to understand where you are going, you have to understand where you have been. Therefore, let me begin by giving you a very brief developmental history of law and psychiatry. Of course, like all psychoanalytic history, this one is constructed from the peculiar point of view of the analyst and you should feel free to impute to me counter transference, repression, denial, reaction formation, projection and egocentricity.

My history begins with the decade of the 1950s, when psychiatry and, particularly, psychoanalysis had reached the peak of their power and influence in the United States. It was acceptable even for judges to announce that they had been psychoanalyzed. Two such federal judges stood out: Judge Jerome Frank and Judge David Bazelon. Frank is less well known to psychiatrists...

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Mental Health Courts Resource Guide

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Court-based problem-solving initiatives seek to address the growing number of mentally ill defendants that have entered the criminal justice system by focusing on the immediate pressures that have led to the development of the mental health court strategy, as well as the challenging applications for this therapeutically oriented judicial approach.

Links to related online resources are listed below. Non-digitized publications may be borrowed from the NCSC Library; call numbers are provided.

Mental Health Court Performance Measures (MHCPM). MHCPM is a set of 14 performance measures that offers court managers and administrators a tool to monitor the performance of mental health courts.

Developing a Mental Health Court: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum. The National Center for State Courts partnered with Council of State Governments to develop this free curriculum for courts wishing to develop a mental health court.

Waters, Nicole L. State Standards: Building Better Mental Health Courts. (2015). As formal mental health courts (MHCs) enter their third decade in existence, policymakers...

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Law & Psychiatry: Murder, Inheritance, and Mental Illness

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Abstract

Should a murderer be allowed to inherit the victim's estate? The question dates from biblical times, but most jurisdictions today have statutes in place that bar inheritance by convicted murderers. However, a special problem arises when the killer has a severe mental illness and has been found not guilty by reason of insanity. Should such people, who have not been convicted of a crime, be permitted to collect their inheritance? Jurisdictions vary in their responses, with the rules reflecting a mix of practical and moral considerations influenced by different perspectives about what determines the behavior of persons with mental illness. (Psychiatric Services 62:707–709, 2011)

Have you killed, and also taken possession?” the biblical prophet Elijah asked Ahab, King of Samaria, who with his wife, Jezebel, was being accused of having done precisely that (1). Embodied in Elijah's question is the moral intuition that wrongdoers should not profit from their...

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Responding to Subpoenas for Mental Health Records in California

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In any case where the Plaintiff seeks compensation for mental distress or anguish, Defendants may find themselves needing to subpoena mental health records to probe into pre-existing mental health issues and the extent of the Plaintiff's current complaints.  These records are subject to safeguards above and beyond the average medical record.  Medical providers may find themselves in a conundrum since they must be protective of the patient's mental health records to comply with state and federal laws, but they are also legally required to comply with the subpoena in a timely manner.  Two California laws provide the framework for responding to a subpoena requesting mental health records:

1) The Lanterman-Petris -Short ("LPS") Act or California Welfare and Institutions Code, Section 5328 et. seq.; and 2) The California Confidentiality of Medical Information Act ("CMIA") or Civil Code Section 56 et. seq.

Below is information about each law to take into consideration when responding to a subpoena.

Lanterman-Petris-Short Act...

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