Gavin Newsom’s CARE Court plan for mentally ill is controversial — and long overdue
Sacramento BeeMay 20, 2022
A truly brilliant college classmate with a debilitating mental illness got in touch with me some years back, looking for help finding a job. By then, I realized that Joe had shown every symptom of schizophrenia even when we were in school.
When we met for lunch, though, he was in worse shape than I’d feared. In fact, he was living in a
I told him the truth, which was that he needed treatment more than job leads, and offered to work with him to find whatever help he needed. Help for what, he kept saying, when his only problem was the many people and institutions conspiring to keep him unemployed. He was yelling by then, as he did every time we talked.
And you know, I’d yell, too, if I had a disease so cruel that it kept me from having any kind of a life, and even from seeing that disease for what it was.
Two years ago,
He never did get any treatment, rejecting all services right up to the end. And died blessedly free of any government intrusion on his freedom to slip away unnoticed.
So you bet I support Gov. Gavin Newsom’s controversial plan to “take some damn responsibility to implement our ideals” by making people like Joe get the care that the symptoms of their *&^% of an illness can keep them from ever addressing.
One of the many criticisms of Newsom’s proposed Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court is that it’s coercive. And yes, it is, because for people like Joe, it has to be.
What’s most infuriating to me is that even after all these years of seeking solutions, only the scale of the problem of those living on the streets has changed. And while it’s still true that seriously mentally ill people are more likely to be victimized than to be a danger to others, the new P2P meth does make those who take it more violent, causing paranoia, hallucinations, rapid brain damage, and yes, an explosion of homelessness.
As laid out in a deeply reported
So yes, it’s past time to try some new and even desperate measures, and that’s exactly what Newsom’s proposed Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment Court is.
The new system would let family members, first responders and behavioral health providers petition a civil judge to initiate a
A friend who runs treatment programs in another blue state sees this is an approach that’s desperately needed. But if she even mentions it, she’s vilified by disability advocates who see forced treatment as a human rights violation that criminalizes mental illness and addiction.
Only, our prisons are already filled with people who are there because they’re sick — and who might not be there if they’d had the kind of long-term treatment that this program would offer.
Critics say it would waste money better spent on education and early intervention, but what about those for whom it’s too late for early intervention?
There’s also a shortage of mental health professionals, who are underpaid and vulnerable to burnout.
But what we’ve been doing for the last 40-plus years has not worked. As state Sen.
And as much as I appreciate the effort to protect their civil liberties, I care more about keeping them alive, and maybe even helping them to have more of a life.
There are thousands of Joe Slovinecs out there, and to keep doing things the same old way is really to give up on them.
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