New California Court for the Mentally Ill Tests a State’s Liberal Values

Tim Arango

The New York Times

Originally posted 21 March 24

Here is an excerpt:

The new initiative, called CARE Court — for Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment — is a cornerstone of California’s latest campaign to address the intertwined crises of mental illness and homelessness on the streets of communities up and down the state.

Another piece of the effort is Proposition 1, a ballot measure championed by Gov. Gavin Newsom and narrowly approved by California voters this month. It authorizes $6.4 billion in bonds to pay for thousands of treatment beds and for more housing for the homeless — resources that could help pay for treatment plans put in place by CARE Court judges.

And Mr. Newsom, a Democrat in his second term, has not only promised more resources for treatment but has pledged to make it easier to compel treatment, arguing that civil liberties concerns have left far too many people without the care they need.

So when Ms. Collette went to court, she was surprised, and disappointed, to learn that the judge would not be able to mandate treatment for Tamra.

Instead, it is the treatment providers who would be under court order — to ensure that medication, therapy and housing are available in a system that has long struggled to reliably provide such services.

“I was hoping it would have a little more punch to it,” Ms. Collette said. “I thought it would have a little more power to order them into some kind of care.”

The info is here.

Here is a summary:

California's new CARE Court (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) is a court system designed to address the issues of mental illness and homelessness. It aims to provide court-ordered care plans for individuals struggling with severe mental illness who are unable to care for themselves. This initiative tests the state's liberal values by balancing individual liberty with the need for intervention to help those in crisis.

The cheapest way to end homelessness is ridiculously simple

By Drake Baer
Business Insider
Originally published May 28, 2015

Here is an excerpt:

What's counterintuitive about housing first is that people get to keep their homes even if they keep using drugs or alcohol. As we reported last February, this method is better at keeping people from lapsing back into homelessness than traditional housing methods, where homeless people have to lock down jobs and stay sober to keep their temporary housing.

So you could say that the Housing First method isn't just more compassionate to the people who suffer from homelessness, it's also more effective at keeping them off the streets and preventing the drain on community funds.

"If you move people into permanent supportive housing first, and then give them help, it seems to work better,” Nan Roman, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Homelessness, told The New Yorker in September. “It's intuitive, in a way. People do better when they have stability."

The entire article is here.

Early Death for Severe Mental Illness?

By Allen Frances
The Huffington Post Blog
Originally published December 30, 2014

People diagnosed with serious mental illness -- schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or severe depression -- die 20 years early, on average, because of a combination of lousy medical care, smoking, lack of exercise, complications of medication, suicide, and accidents. They are the most discriminated-against and neglected group in the U.S., which has become probably the worst place in the developed world to be mentally ill.

In many previous blog posts I have bemoaned the shameful state of psychiatric care and housing for people with severe mental illness. My conclusion was that the United States has become the worst place, and now the worst time ever, to have a severe mental illness. Hundreds of thousands of the severely ill languish inappropriately in prisons. Additional hundreds of thousands are homeless on the street.

The entire blog post is here.