Conservatorship without police involvement
There are huge gaps in communitybased services, which has led to the criminalization of many mental health services, with a need to be accused of a felony and found incompetent to stand trial to obtain state hospital services. ("Will CARE Courts and conservatorship actually make a difference on California’s streets in 2024?” Opinion, SFChronicle .com, Dec. 30)
At one time there was provision for an outpatient conservatorship, which provided a manner to require community based services, without acute psychiatric hospitalization or law enforcement involvement.
Currently someone living in a parking structure, under a doorway, or under a tarp, eating out of garbage cans without becoming ill, and squatting or sleeping in a parking structure is not considered gravely disabled as they purportedly have “food, clothing, and shelter.”
An increasing number are homeless and in obvious distress, screaming at auditory hallucinations, which torture them, appearing menacing to the public, and presenting fear of accepting services, given their paranoia. They are victims of robbery and physical and sexual assault. These individuals lack capacity to understand the causal relationship between their illness, living in a mental purgatory and miserable living conditions and being routinely victimized.
We would not allow someone with dementia to live a dangerous life on the street. This tool is necessary to compel treatment of high-risk individuals with serious and persistent mental illness, enabling them to benefit from substance abuse treatment and accept housing undeterred by acute paranoia, but without the need of traumatic arrests, involuntary psychiatric holds, and incarceration in jails, prisons or forensic state hospitals.
Craig Rothhammer, Aptos