Commitment To A Mental Institution

Involuntary commitment or civil commitment is a legal process through which an individual with symptoms of severe mental illness is court-ordered into treatment in

Given the number of incarcerated inmates who suffer from some form of mental illness, there are growing concerns and questions in the medical field about treatment of the mentally ill in the prison system. When a person with a mental illness commits a crime or break the law, they are immediately taken to jail or sent off to prison instead of being evaluated and placed in a hospital or other mental health facility. “I have always wondered if the number of mentally ill inmates increased since deinstitutionalization” Since prison main focus is on the crimes inmates are incarcerated; the actual treatment needed for the mentally ill is secondary. Mentally ill prisoners on the surface may appear to be just difficult inmates depending on the

The incarceration of those who are mentally ill is on the continual rise. Many states juggle with the decision of placing offenders in Mental Hospital or locating them in State Prisons. Latessa and Holsinger (2011) discuss two major reasons for the increase of those with mental illness within the prison system. First, many states have no longer allow for the insanity plea during criminal trials, thus those who suffer from mental illness are not required to receive mandatory mental treatment. This is due to the discomforting idea that criminal offenders should not be given the same living conditions as those whom are patients of mental wards. Secondly, longer sentences have created a surplus of mentally ill offenders needing treatment. Soderstrom (2007) added that the lack of mental health support systems in

The shutdown of state mental hospitals and lack of available financial and institutional resources force mentally ill people to the United States Judicial System for mental health. Every year thousands of people are arrested for various crimes and they are sent to jail. Sixteen percent of these people have some type of mental health problem (Public Broadcasting System , 2001). When we consider that the United States has the largest incarcerated population in the world at 2.2 million, this number is staggering (Anasseril E. Daniel, 2007). This is about 1% of the entire population of the United States. There are many reasons as to why the situation has taken such a bad turn and when the history of the treatment of mental illness is examined one can see how the situation developed into the inhumane disaster it is today.

Deinstitutionalization Deinstitutionalization is defined as the movement of severely mentally ill people out of large state institutions. In the 1950s, public hospitals housed well over 500,000 people. The reduction in the number of institutionalized people began in 1956. By 1980, the residential population in mental hospitals dropped by nearly three-quarters, an average of 154,000 individuals. This decrease is due to the process of closing public hospitals and transferring patients to community-based mental health services. Consequently, community services were implemented (Talbott 2004).

 War or armed conflict.  Natural disasters  Mental disorder, where mental health services are unavailable or difficult to access or as a result of deinstitutionalization.

Within contemporary society, the legal process of placing an individual into a detention or psychatric treatment facility is called "civil commitment." Typically, this is reserved for the mentally ill, or those people who have satisfied the Court's rule that they are a danger to others, or to themselves. Society realizes that, at times, an individual may pose a danger to themselves or to society and be unable to make rational decisions. In fact, in most jurisdictions in the modern world, involuntary commitment procedures are specifically applied to individuals who have manifested some form of serious mental illness that acts to impair their reasoning to such extent that they are unable to make cogent and logical decisions. Therefore, at these times the state (the Court system) must intercede to find ways to make the appropriate decisions under a legal template. Involuntary commitment may have, in the past, been used in certain situations, inappropriately, but the statutory criteria that indicates one is a danger to self or others usually acts as a legal axiom (Korba, 2008).

The theory of ‘deinstitutionalization’ began arising with the theory of providing more freedom to the mentally ill and less spending on full time care facilities. The widespread use of drugs to control the mentally ill in the 1900s led to a mass release of patients and an emptying of asylums. Outpatient Psychiatric Clinics were established. Case Law in the United States began to be generated to provide the mentally ill with greater rights. Shelton v. Tucker 1960 provided that the mentally ill should receive care in the “least restrictive alternative”, which is a practice still utilized. O’Connor v. Donaldson 1975 ruled that non-dangerous mental patients have the right to be treated or discharged if they have been institutionalized against their will. This new approached permitted the mass exodus

Chapter 15 Summary: Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment Many ethical issues surround the involuntary psychiatric commitment of mentally ill patients. In the 1980s, the city of Manhattan was overwhelmed by the surplus of mentally unstable and homeless individuals residing on the streets. In an effort to help relieve the burden on the city, Project Help was created to provide assistance to the needy. Joyce Brown, a 40-year-old homeless woman, slept outside of an ice cream parlor for 18 months. Her appearance suggested that she was mentally unstable and in a state of constant self-neglect. Project Help forcibly admitted her to the emergency department of a local hospital and injected with antipsychotic drugs and tranquilizers. After being evaluated

The impacts of DeShaney v. Winnebago are used in cases of psychiatric patients and many other child abuse cases. In the context of psychiatric patients, two Supreme Court cases lead the legal precedent on how psychiatric cases are followed through: The case of Youngberg v. Romeo, which held that the

Helms 1 Miranda Helms Mrs. Gallos English 3H 20 April 2016 Mentally Ill Criminals : Punishment vs. Treatment When a mentally ill offender is brought before the court, the appointed judge has to make a difficult decision, determining whether treatment or punishment would be more effective in the case. Cases may differ, some may be more deliberate and perplexing while others are straightforward, but more research is needed for cases involving the mentally ill no matter how simple they may seem. Many factors are measured when a mentally ill criminal is prosecuted, such as their illness, the severity of their illness, and what type of crime they committed. Some firmly believe that prisons are where all criminals belong, no matter their mental state, but there is also another side. Others are making their opinions known, and fighting for treatment for these offenders.

Civil commitment procedures and policies vary across the nation, Virginia holding one of the shortest procedures in emergency response to mental health crisis. Virginia’s mental health reform needs comes to the forefront of the political agenda after tragedy ensues itself. Although, prior reports and evaluations identify service gap issues

Outpatient Commitment also referred as Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) alludes to state psychological well-being laws that make civil court technique where in a judge requests a man with serious mental sickness to stick to an outpatient treatment arrangement intended to relapse and unsafe worsening. Assisted Outpatient Commitment permits the helped involuntary treatment of people determined to have serious mental issue who are living in the community and encountering an psychological illness emergency that require intercession to avoid further detorioration that is hurtful to themselves or others, instead of held in medical

Total Institutions By the end of the 1800s there was a movement to treat those with mental illness more humanely with the use of psychiatry/psychology and religion, as well as an emphasis on the belief that there was a cure that could be found through treatments. This shift in belief leads to psychiatric facilities that provide long-term care of those with mental illnesses. These facilities were problematic because they intended to cure and treat those with mental illness, but the institution prevented its patients from being able to successfully reintegrate into society. A total institution is a concept Goffman (1961) created to characterize these psychiatric facilities which he described as small, segregated societies within larger society. These smaller societies are formal

Deinstitutionalization states that instead of allowing “a seriously mentally ill patient [to stay] indefinitely in state hospitals, public policy [requires] either treatment in the community or release into the community after brief periods of hospitalization” (Erickson and Erickson 25). This policy “assume[s] that mentally ill individuals [will] take prescribed medications and seek outpatient counseling” (Erickson and Erickson 25). This is problematic because as stated previously, severely mentally ill individuals are not likely to take medication regularly on their own or seek outpatient counseling either because they do not desire help though it is needed or because access to these services has an unreasonable wait list and they do not receive help in time. Being released from the hospital after receiving an insufficient amount of care is dangerous both for the individual being discharged because they can become a danger to themselves, and for the public because the individual can impose danger onto the people they come