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The push to extend Laura's Law makes sense to many in Nevada County affected by the Jan. 10, 2001, shootings that left three dead at the hands of mentally ill gunman Scott Thorpe.
Laura Wilcox's parents, Nick and Amanda Wilcox, maintain that if a similar law had been in force when Thorpe shot their 19-year-old daughter four times inside the county's Behavioral Health Department, he could have received the help he needed and the tragedy might have been averted.
The law that would allow California counties to involuntarily steer a mental patient at risk into outpatient treatment with a court order was actually passed in 2002. It is scheduled to sunset on Jan. 1, 2008. Assembly Bill 2357, which is now in front of the state Legislature, would extend the law to Jan. 1, 2013.
The original Laura's Law, AB1421, received no funding from the Legislature and only one county, Los Angeles, has used it. However, the pilot outpatient program in Los Angeles using Laura's Law is on a voluntary basis, and the official who administers it says the criteria excludes so many patients that it can't be effective on a wide scale.
Other detractors say that a bill calling for involuntary treatment is wrong for civil rights reasons. Some have said a study lauding New York's Kendra's Law - upon which Laura's Law was based - was a nonscientific, in-house report with skewed results.
They also have said the new Proposition 63 funding for mental health in California could bring services that people like Thorpe need and render an involuntary law moot.
But in recent interviews, Nick Wilcox said he did not agree.
"We recognize it was less than a perfect bill, but you have to start somewhere," Wilcox said Friday. He testified before the state assembly's judiciary committee this week, which dealt with the civil rights question and passed the extension bill on a 7-2 vote to an appropriations (funding) committee.
"We believe that the civil rights of the mentally ill should respected and protected," Wilcox told the judiciary committee. "However, when one person's free exercise of their civil liberties infringes upon the rights of another, then as a society we must strike a balance."
Earlier this month he told The Union, "The argument on the other side is that many, many people who are mentally ill do not recognize it and do not seek treatment and do not take their medication and end up doing bad things," Wilcox said. He said Laura's Law would address those people, like Thorpe, who was refusing his medication, had a cache of weapons and had family members pleading with the county to do something about him just prior to the shootings.
Although Thorpe was a county patient, "There was no program in place to keep track of him and respond to his deteriorating condition," Wilcox said in testimony before a judicial committee on April 4. "We felt at the time that the treatment program envisioned under (AB 1421, the original Laura's Law) would have benefited Scott Thorpe and that a court order might have made him more compliant with his treatment program."
Sally Zinman is the executive director of the California Network of Mental Health Clients, one of two groups that brought a suit against the use of Laura's Law in Los Angeles, which was later settled. Her group even opposes the name of the law.
"Any law named after a single person can be an emotional reaction," Zinman said. "Our organization is opposed to forced treatment in any way. The real solution is voluntary, community-based services."
She said that after 30 to 35 years of bad mental health services in California, "finally, with Prop. 63, we can buy community services that are voluntary and if voluntary services are available, then involuntary things wouldn't be needed."
Zinman said the law is "a response that is totally archaic ... The untruth is that people with mental illness are more violent than other people."
Kendra's Law
Kendra's Law passed in New York in 1999 and was extended by legislators in 2005.
It is named after Kendra Webdale, who was killed when a mental patient pushed her in front of a subway train. The man who killed her, Andrew Goldstein, had a long history of mental illness, just as Scott Thorpe did.
The New York State Office of Mental Health said Kendra's Law was a major success in a report issued in March 2005 about the law's first five years and its patients.
About 3,900 received "Assisted Outpatient Treatment," or AOT, the same name used in Laura's Law for involuntary care by way of a court-order program.
The New York department said those in the program showed a vast reduction in harmful behaviors compared to before, including 77 percent fewer hospitalizations, 83 percent fewer arrests, 87 percent fewer jailings, and 74 percent less homelessness. The department did not return several phone calls for comment.
The state said those given the AOT were among the most severely ill in the state who got a better quality of life and stuck to treatment because of it. According to a statement from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a mental health advocacy group that backed Kendra's Law, adopting it led to "enhanced accountability and improved treatment plan collaboration for all service recipients - effectively committing the system to the patient, not just the patient to the system."
Carla Jacobs is a mental health advocate from Orange County who believes in both Kendra's Law and Laura's Law, partially because of relatives who have suffered mental illness. She has a schizophrenic brother who is missing, a schizophrenic sister-in-law in a state hospital, and her husband's sister was diagnosed as a mental health patient after killing her own mother.
"Kendra's Law has proven AOT reduces hospitalizations and jailing," Jacobs said. "One of the purposes of AOT is it not only commits a person, it commits the county to giving services."
According to the New York report on Kendra's Law, the statute made it possible to identify mental health patients at risk of hurting themselves and others. It also forced counties to give them services they might not have received.
According to Zinman: "I know one thing, New York put millions into services for those people that was court-ordered. Our feeling is it was the services that made the difference, not the court orders." With Prop. 63 monies, "California will be able to give services without court orders."
Harvey Rosenthal became mentally ill as a young man in New York and has worked in the mental health field all of his adult life in state facilities and for patient advocate groups. He said the New York mental health department's success figures with Kendra's Law should be viewed with skepticism.
He said the New York Legislature was so skeptical that members extended Kendra's Law instead of making it permanent. They also demanded an independent study for the law "because the opponents were successful in saying the study was not scientific and did not prove that forced treatment worked."
The entire argument over involuntary versus voluntary treatment is "the most contentious debate about mental health in the whole country," Rosenthal said.
In testimony against the successful extension of Kendra's law, Rosenthal told New York Legislature the study was based on the opinions of case managers and did not compare patients to a scientific control group.
The New York Lawyers For The Public Interest opposed the Kendra's Law extensions and the study, saying that 72 percent of the people ordered to get its services were African-American or Hispanic. That created a huge disparity compared with the state overall, which has an African-American and Hispanic population making up 31 percent of New York's 19 million people.
Experiment in Los Angeles
The only place the ideas of Laura's Law have been used in California is in a pilot program in Los Angeles County. Alisa Dunn runs the program as director of the county's Mental Health Court Program.
Dunn said about nine people are enrolled in the all-volunteer program now. About 40 have gone through it, according to Kirsten Deichert of the county's mental health department.
They are misdemeanor court case defendants who are mentally incompetent to stand trial or at risk of becoming incompetent and who have agreed to the treatment program, which triggers a court order to give it to them. They also come from a program where patients are offered treatment instead of jail time.
Dunn is thrilled with the program's results, but not with the language in Laura's Law.
"The program is incredible and the clients are actually doing beautifully," Dunn said. But there is not enough of them because the criteria calls for a certain number of hospitalizations or jailings, which limits the number of possible participants.
"It's hard to find people to fit," Dunn said. "You have to ask yourself, 'Why did no other county do it?' It's hard to do involuntary and that's why no one went that route."
The legal parameters of voluntary versus involuntary treatment is an ever larger question in the issue, Nick Wilcox said. But seeking funds during state budget time presents the next battle as the arguments roll into the appropriations committee.
Wilcox said the criteria that held patients back from Dunn's program "were overall things that had to be compromised to get AB1421 out of the Senate" back in 2002.
ooo
To contact senior staff writer Dave Moller, e-mail davem@theunion.com or call 477-4237.
Kendra's Law success rates
The New York State Office of Mental Health followed 3,800 patients who have been given court orders for treatment using Kendra's Law, on which Laura's Law was based. Detractors said the patient base and study was racially skewed to people of color and not scientifically completed.
According to the department after 5 years of Kendra's Law, the patients showed these remarkable results:
• 77 percent fewer hospitalizations.
• 83 percent fewer arrests.
• 87 percent fewer jailings.
• 74 percent less homelessness.
Information from the New York Office of Mental Health.
Laura Wilcox's parents, Nick and Amanda Wilcox, maintain that if a similar law had been in force when Thorpe shot their 19-year-old daughter four times inside the county's Behavioral Health Department, he could have received the help he needed and the tragedy might have been averted.
The law that would allow California counties to involuntarily steer a mental patient at risk into outpatient treatment with a court order was actually passed in 2002. It is scheduled to sunset on Jan. 1, 2008. Assembly Bill 2357, which is now in front of the state Legislature, would extend the law to Jan. 1, 2013.
The original Laura's Law, AB1421, received no funding from the Legislature and only one county, Los Angeles, has used it. However, the pilot outpatient program in Los Angeles using Laura's Law is on a voluntary basis, and the official who administers it says the criteria excludes so many patients that it can't be effective on a wide scale.
Other detractors say that a bill calling for involuntary treatment is wrong for civil rights reasons. Some have said a study lauding New York's Kendra's Law - upon which Laura's Law was based - was a nonscientific, in-house report with skewed results.
They also have said the new Proposition 63 funding for mental health in California could bring services that people like Thorpe need and render an involuntary law moot.
But in recent interviews, Nick Wilcox said he did not agree.
"We recognize it was less than a perfect bill, but you have to start somewhere," Wilcox said Friday. He testified before the state assembly's judiciary committee this week, which dealt with the civil rights question and passed the extension bill on a 7-2 vote to an appropriations (funding) committee.
"We believe that the civil rights of the mentally ill should respected and protected," Wilcox told the judiciary committee. "However, when one person's free exercise of their civil liberties infringes upon the rights of another, then as a society we must strike a balance."
Earlier this month he told The Union, "The argument on the other side is that many, many people who are mentally ill do not recognize it and do not seek treatment and do not take their medication and end up doing bad things," Wilcox said. He said Laura's Law would address those people, like Thorpe, who was refusing his medication, had a cache of weapons and had family members pleading with the county to do something about him just prior to the shootings.
Although Thorpe was a county patient, "There was no program in place to keep track of him and respond to his deteriorating condition," Wilcox said in testimony before a judicial committee on April 4. "We felt at the time that the treatment program envisioned under (AB 1421, the original Laura's Law) would have benefited Scott Thorpe and that a court order might have made him more compliant with his treatment program."
Sally Zinman is the executive director of the California Network of Mental Health Clients, one of two groups that brought a suit against the use of Laura's Law in Los Angeles, which was later settled. Her group even opposes the name of the law.
"Any law named after a single person can be an emotional reaction," Zinman said. "Our organization is opposed to forced treatment in any way. The real solution is voluntary, community-based services."
She said that after 30 to 35 years of bad mental health services in California, "finally, with Prop. 63, we can buy community services that are voluntary and if voluntary services are available, then involuntary things wouldn't be needed."
Zinman said the law is "a response that is totally archaic ... The untruth is that people with mental illness are more violent than other people."
Kendra's Law
Kendra's Law passed in New York in 1999 and was extended by legislators in 2005.
It is named after Kendra Webdale, who was killed when a mental patient pushed her in front of a subway train. The man who killed her, Andrew Goldstein, had a long history of mental illness, just as Scott Thorpe did.
The New York State Office of Mental Health said Kendra's Law was a major success in a report issued in March 2005 about the law's first five years and its patients.
About 3,900 received "Assisted Outpatient Treatment," or AOT, the same name used in Laura's Law for involuntary care by way of a court-order program.
The New York department said those in the program showed a vast reduction in harmful behaviors compared to before, including 77 percent fewer hospitalizations, 83 percent fewer arrests, 87 percent fewer jailings, and 74 percent less homelessness. The department did not return several phone calls for comment.
The state said those given the AOT were among the most severely ill in the state who got a better quality of life and stuck to treatment because of it. According to a statement from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a mental health advocacy group that backed Kendra's Law, adopting it led to "enhanced accountability and improved treatment plan collaboration for all service recipients - effectively committing the system to the patient, not just the patient to the system."
Carla Jacobs is a mental health advocate from Orange County who believes in both Kendra's Law and Laura's Law, partially because of relatives who have suffered mental illness. She has a schizophrenic brother who is missing, a schizophrenic sister-in-law in a state hospital, and her husband's sister was diagnosed as a mental health patient after killing her own mother.
"Kendra's Law has proven AOT reduces hospitalizations and jailing," Jacobs said. "One of the purposes of AOT is it not only commits a person, it commits the county to giving services."
According to the New York report on Kendra's Law, the statute made it possible to identify mental health patients at risk of hurting themselves and others. It also forced counties to give them services they might not have received.
According to Zinman: "I know one thing, New York put millions into services for those people that was court-ordered. Our feeling is it was the services that made the difference, not the court orders." With Prop. 63 monies, "California will be able to give services without court orders."
Harvey Rosenthal became mentally ill as a young man in New York and has worked in the mental health field all of his adult life in state facilities and for patient advocate groups. He said the New York mental health department's success figures with Kendra's Law should be viewed with skepticism.
He said the New York Legislature was so skeptical that members extended Kendra's Law instead of making it permanent. They also demanded an independent study for the law "because the opponents were successful in saying the study was not scientific and did not prove that forced treatment worked."
The entire argument over involuntary versus voluntary treatment is "the most contentious debate about mental health in the whole country," Rosenthal said.
In testimony against the successful extension of Kendra's law, Rosenthal told New York Legislature the study was based on the opinions of case managers and did not compare patients to a scientific control group.
The New York Lawyers For The Public Interest opposed the Kendra's Law extensions and the study, saying that 72 percent of the people ordered to get its services were African-American or Hispanic. That created a huge disparity compared with the state overall, which has an African-American and Hispanic population making up 31 percent of New York's 19 million people.
Experiment in Los Angeles
The only place the ideas of Laura's Law have been used in California is in a pilot program in Los Angeles County. Alisa Dunn runs the program as director of the county's Mental Health Court Program.
Dunn said about nine people are enrolled in the all-volunteer program now. About 40 have gone through it, according to Kirsten Deichert of the county's mental health department.
They are misdemeanor court case defendants who are mentally incompetent to stand trial or at risk of becoming incompetent and who have agreed to the treatment program, which triggers a court order to give it to them. They also come from a program where patients are offered treatment instead of jail time.
Dunn is thrilled with the program's results, but not with the language in Laura's Law.
"The program is incredible and the clients are actually doing beautifully," Dunn said. But there is not enough of them because the criteria calls for a certain number of hospitalizations or jailings, which limits the number of possible participants.
"It's hard to find people to fit," Dunn said. "You have to ask yourself, 'Why did no other county do it?' It's hard to do involuntary and that's why no one went that route."
The legal parameters of voluntary versus involuntary treatment is an ever larger question in the issue, Nick Wilcox said. But seeking funds during state budget time presents the next battle as the arguments roll into the appropriations committee.
Wilcox said the criteria that held patients back from Dunn's program "were overall things that had to be compromised to get AB1421 out of the Senate" back in 2002.
ooo
To contact senior staff writer Dave Moller, e-mail davem@theunion.com or call 477-4237.
Kendra's Law success rates
The New York State Office of Mental Health followed 3,800 patients who have been given court orders for treatment using Kendra's Law, on which Laura's Law was based. Detractors said the patient base and study was racially skewed to people of color and not scientifically completed.
According to the department after 5 years of Kendra's Law, the patients showed these remarkable results:
• 77 percent fewer hospitalizations.
• 83 percent fewer arrests.
• 87 percent fewer jailings.
• 74 percent less homelessness.
Information from the New York Office of Mental Health.
