Disability Advocates Suing California’s CARE Act Are Wrong

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

My son had his first psychotic break while away at college. He was 21. Before I could take a breath my family’s life cratered, and I found myself fighting an epic war with California’s mental health system. I naively believed mental health care mirrored physical health, but parity exists in name only.

My son cycled in and out of hospitals on 5150s — police lingo for a 72-hour psychiatric hold. He was admitted with signs of psychosis and paranoia, but instead of treatment, he was discharged. He had an innate ability, even in a psychotic state, to “present well” before a mental health court judge. My guy knew how to beat the system.

I wasn’t allowed to offer input. In fact, I was prohibited from being at the hearing. His care teams fared no better, and his symptoms worsened. Incessant voices battered his brain, and severe psychosis dragged him down a mental health hellhole. He needed help, but it would never happen unless he was involuntarily admitted to a hospital.

Eventually, he ended up on the streets of San Francisco, living in squalor. When I found him, my heart sank. My talented, thoughtful son, who once dreamed of being a video game story writer, was now indistinguishable from all the other filthy, homeless, wandering souls in San Francisco. The system had broken him, and I didn’t know how to save him.

This is why the lawsuit filed by Disability Rights California, Western Center on Law and Poverty, and the Public Interest Law Project to block California’s CARE Act is wrong.

For starters, the petition argues my actions — involuntarily getting him into treatment — would take away my son’s autonomy to choose his own medical provider. Except, when individuals are delusional and in denial, they’re incapable of making any coherent decisions, and they certainly have no providers.

The Community Assistance, Recovery, Empowerment (CARE) Act wants to enable families to petition the court to help their adult children instead of excluding parents from the process. The law lets a parent become a supporter in their adult child’s recovery. When my son was at his worst, our relationship was adversarial and painful because he accused me of fabricating his mental illness and barred me from any involvement in his care. Under these circumstances, he had no chance of recovery.

When did a life of psychosis and living in squalor become OK?

If not for a lucky break, my son may never have gotten off the streets and into the treatment he deserved. Families shouldn’t be relying on luck as medicine.

The petition states, “thousands of unhoused Californians with mental illness will be threatened with court orders, forced into involuntary treatment and swept off the streets, not because they are a danger to themselves or others, but because a judge has speculated they are ‘likely ‘ to become so in the future.”

I call bullshit on that. Most of the judges my son encountered let him walk right out the door. And, this program doesn’t force anyone into mandatory treatment. Just the opposite. This is a civil program. It wants to decriminalize mental illness. A person can refuse treatment.

There also are no mental health beds in California to sweep anyone anywhere unless the plan is to put them in jails, which happen to be our state’s largest mental health care providers.

CARE Act also doesn’t require the person to have a history of incarceration, failed hospitalizations, or refusing medication. Currently, that’s how it works for qualifying “as a danger to oneself” in order to receive involuntary care. My son had to land in the gutter to meet the criteria for involuntary treatment.

If I had any of these proactive tools, it’s conceivable that my son could have been helped earlier. His brain could have begun to heal sooner.

The CARE Act was passed to help individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders. These are individuals suffering from some of the most severe mental illnesses.

This law can be a real game-changer for California’s mental health system. A first after decades of failure. The law could become a national model if given a chance. Blocking it only accomplishes one thing — maintaining the status quo and leaving our most severely mentally ill on and off the streets in harm’s way.

No one deserves to suffer in such a manner, and no family should be held hostage to a broken mental health system when trying to get treatment for their adult child.