The Homeless and the Law
| Publication year | 1985 |
| Pages | 405 |
| Citation | Vol. 14 No. 3 Pg. 405 |
1985, March, Pg. 405. The Homeless and the Law
Column Editor's Note: This month's column is the first of two parts regarding the question of whether the criteria for civil commitment in Colorado should be changed. In Part I, the author proposes changing commitment criteria to follow the American Psychiatric Association model commitment act and recent legislative changes adopted in Washington and Utah. Part II will be a response to the suggestions made in Part I and will be published in the April issue in this column. The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and not necessarily those of the Column Editor or the Disability Law Committee.
Numerous articles have recently appeared in publications across the country discussing the failures of deinstitutionalization. These failures, the articles claim, are most apparent in the increase in the number of street people who are chronically mentally ill. In a study of St. Louis shelters in the winter of 1982-1983, the number of homeless among the mentally ill was 57 percent.(fn1) A New York study, focusing not on the shelters but on the streets, found the mentally ill to comprise approximately 90 percent of the homeless.(fn2)
Deinstitutionalization starting from the 1960s and continuing to the present, has put many of those diagnosed as chronically mentally ill out of hospitals after short periods of treatment. They returned to communities which had inadequate support systems to meet their unique needs---needs derived from being neither ill enough for hospitalization nor well enough to care for themselves. Many of these former patients have fallen through the cracks and are among the homeless.
Another group of the chronically mentally ill on the streets has never been treated. It has been estimated that over 50 percent of the mentally ill fall into this category.(fn3) They are the uninstitutionalized generation, the baby boom children who have come of age. Young adulthood is usually the age at which schizophrenia and manic-depression first strike.
Most of the uninstitutionalized are on the streets because they have been denied treatment for the diseases which have ravaged their brains and devastated their lives. This denial of treatment and care is legislated in Colorado's antiquated mental health laws. The laws reflect psychosocial theories of another day and have not been revised to keep pace with the times. Specifically, these laws are out of step with the conclusions drawn by brain researchers who have established a biological basis for chronic mental illnesses.(fn4)
Research on brain abnormalities commonly known as chronic mental illnesses has also revealed that families are not adversaries to their ill family members. Instead, they also are victims of the devastation brought by these illnesses. Families try to obtain help to prevent the unnecessary waste of a once-promising human life. However, the legal system blocks these efforts by its failure to recognize both the biological basis for some of these diseases and the fact that the families of the mentally ill are not necessarily to blame. In fact, the legal system has denied the chronically mentally ill the most appropriate treatment to cure or control symptoms in the least restrictive setting.
Unless a mentally ill adult is willing and able to participate in treatment on a voluntary basis (and those with major psychiatric disturbances seldom are), it is very difficult for families to break through the legal and psychiatric morass to get them effective treatment. Few of the chronically mentally ill qualify for involuntary hospitalization as a danger to themselves or others. The only recourse that families have under Colorado's current commitment laws is to obtain help by using the provisions concerning persons who are "gravely disabled."(fn5) It is at this point that Colorado's legal system has most failed the chronically mentally ill, their families and the public.
Under Colorado law, "gravely disabled" means
a condition in...
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