December 14, 2021
My written comment to the California Assembly Health and Judiciary Committee about LPS (involuntary commitment) reform:
As the mother of a son who fought hard to live with his schizo-affective disorder, I have over 25 years experience with the California mental health system. I don't agree with your conclusions that LPS gives counties adequate tools to meet the needs of SMI or that changes to the act would endanger civil liberties.
I do agree that LPS needs to ensure adequate follow up care. I.e. My son was involuntarily committed to Kaiser hospital in July 2014. Due to the lack of beds in Sacramento County, he was transferred to Dignity Health in Yolo County without our family knowledge even though he had designated me as his representative on his advanced care directive. His records were not transferred from Kaiser to Dignity Health. I was not able to speak with my son's doctor, they asked for my discharge plan even though I wasn't advised of his health status, and they called subsequently to announce that he'd died. The nightmare continued as I fought to get an independent autopsy and toxicology report.
Obviously there's not space here to divulge 25 years of terrible LPS history in my family. I've written two award winning books about this: Sooner Than Tomorrow (memoir) and Tomorrow Was Yesterday (65 stories from California mothers and mothers from 28 other states). Please read their stories if you really want to know what living under LPS law is like.
Tomorrow Was Yesterday includes a 15-point plan to address serious mental illness developed by activists from across the country. Our top 5 recommendations are: 1) Reclassify SMI from a behavioral to a physical medical condition — looking at SMI through a medical rather than behavioral lens would change the way insurance would have to operate, the way we incarcerate SMI, the way we view SMI homeless; 2) Reform HIPAA; 3) Repeal the IMD Exclusion; 4) Provide a full continuum of care; 5) Decriminalize SMI.
Involuntary treatment is not to impinge on civil liberties. It's to make sure that people receive their right to timely, quality treatment. It's to raise the bar for services rather than meeting only minimum standards. Let's stop fighting over "Are you a danger to yourself or others?" We don't do this for dementia/Parkinson's patients. Let's get people into treatment sooner.
Let's get out of the ideological weeds, stop the bureaucratic quibbling, and look at the big picture of what is needed. Bottom line: I'd demolish LPS as it is written and use available funding (reallocated MHSA funds, Medicaid, and reassigned funding given to unaccountable and unreliable nonprofits)to create a new system that has responsibility, accountability, and independent financial oversight (not MHSA oversight).
Thank you. Dede Ranahan
Just made my year-end donation to No One Cares About Crazy People. Please consider doing likewise to help bring this film to fruition. No One Cares documents the horrifying, inhumane state of our "mental illness system." It exposes human rights violations and asks for change. To donate, click on the link to the film homepage below.
Image from No One Cares Film