To qualify for the program, the person must have a serious mental illness plus a recent history of psychiatric hospitalizations, jailings or acts, threats or attempts of serious violent behavior towards self or others.
[1] While working at Nevada County's public mental health clinic during her winter break from college, on January 10, 2001, she and two other people were shot to death by Scott Harlan Thorpe, a 40-year-old man who resisted his family's and a social worker's attempt to have him hospitalized when he became increasingly delusional and paranoid.
After the killings, Laura's parents chose to advocate for assisted outpatient treatment of individuals considered to have mental illness.
[18] To be eligible under Laura's Law, a patient must have a serious mental illness plus a recent history of psychiatric hospitalizations, jailings or acts, threats or attempts of serious violent behavior towards self or others.
While a specified group of individuals may request an investigation to determine if a person qualifies for a Laura's Law program, only the County mental health director, or his or her designee, may file a petition with the superior court for a hearing to determine if the person should be court ordered to receive the services specified under the law.
The patient must: If the court finds that the individual meets the statutory criteria, the recipient will be provided intensive community treatment services and supervision by multidisciplinary teams of highly trained mental health professionals with staff-to-client ratios of not more than 1 to 10, and additional services, as specified, for persons with the most persistent and severe mental illness.
[28] MindFreedom International and the California Network of Mental Health Clients (CNMHC), along with allies in the psychiatric survivors movement, also fought the measure and its earlier versions, accusing such legislation as a regressive and reprehensible scheme to enforce coerced drug treatment regimens against the will of patients.
The psychiatric survivors movement opposes compulsory treatment on the basis that the ordered drugs often have serious or unpleasant side-effects such as anhedonia, tardive dyskinesia, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, excessive weight gain leading to diabetes, addiction, sexual side effects, and increased risk of suicide.
But over time, that judicial oversight — which is supposed to be the check in our checks-and-balance system — has largely become a rubber stamp to whatever the doctor thinks is best.
Professor Burns, once a strong supporter of the new powers, said he has been forced to change his mind after a study he conducted proved the orders "don't work".
Professor Burns himself admitted that: "We were careful in our Lancet article to say that in well-coordinated mental health services, compulsory treatment has nothing to offer"[34] (emphasis added).
A 2005 study, Kendra's Law A Final Report on the Status of Assisted Outpatient Treatment done by New York State's Office of Mental Health, found:[35] (Table taken directly from source and converted to Wikipedia Table Template) A 2009 study, New York State Assisted Outpatient Treatment Evaluation done by Duke University, Policy Research Associates, University of Virginia, found:[36] (Table taken directly from source and converted to Wikipedia Table Template) The study, Compulsory community and involuntary outpatient treatment for people with severe mental disorders by Steve R Kisely, Leslie Anne Campbell, Neil J Preston published at The Cochrane Library found:[37] The results of this study also did not support the usefulness of compulsory outpatient treatment: Community treatment orders (CTOs) for patients with psychosis (OCTET): a randomised controlled trial done by Professor Tom Burns DSc, Jorun Rugkåsa PhD, Andrew Molodynski MBChB, John Dawson LLD, Ksenija Yeeles BSc, Maria Vazquez-Montes PhD, Merryn Voysey MBiostat, Julia Sinclair DPhil, and Professor Stefan Priebe FRCPsych found:[38]