Should we Change Involuntary Treatment Laws?
Sally Satel writes:
I agree with the earlier commentators’ descriptions of what quality campus mental health systems should do --- namely, provide campus-wide outreach via education; facilitate rapid access to care; establish intervention mechanisms that keep track of students at risk; and coordinate with the local mental health authorities for students who need those services.
But two critical points remain. First, what actions can a school take in coercing treatment when the student resists it? Second, does a school have any responsibility to the wider community when a student who is deemed to be deeply disturbed and possibly violent -- deemed so by the school itself -- is expelled or drops out?
Let’s address these in the context of Jared Lee Loughner, the young man at the center of the Arizona shootings. By now, enough evidence exists to say that Mr. Loughner’s symptoms are highly consistent with a diagnosis of schizophrenia.
The Pima Community College clearly wanted him assessed by a mental health professional. According to The Washington Post, Mr. Loughner’s algebra teacher requested that he see a counselor last summer and begged the counselor to “do something.” In response, the counselor said that he/she could do nothing because the student did not bring a weapon to class, promised to be quiet and seemed harmless.
It appears, however, that Arizona’s remarkably progressive involuntary treatment laws might have allowed the school to act anyway. They permit involuntary evaluation and treatment of a person who desperately needs it. According to this so-called “in need of treatment” standard, an interested party can petition the court for an order for treatment. If the court found Mr. Loughner “persistently or acutely disabled” by severe mental illness and likely to benefit from treatment -- regardless of whether he had a weapon -- an evaluation and subsequent care could have been imposed. (Also, the teachers and students could have sought a petition independent of what the school chose to do.)
