In a follow-up piece to the profile I wrote on 28-year-old Joel Reuter—the loveable Montana regular who was fatally shot by Seattle Police during a standoff in early July—Capitol Hill Seattle blog interviews Reuter’s parents on the changes they’d like to see in our country’s mental health system (Joel was bipolar), starting with Washington State:
Arizona laws about the treatment of the mentally ill are different than most other states.
“All of mental health law is a delicate balance between individual rights and community rights,” said Chick Arnold, a Phoenix attorney who specializes in mental health law. “When the scales tip, community rights prevail.”
And that is one way, Arnold says, in which Arizona differs from other states — tipping them toward community rights and making sure there’s a way to protect the community.
Most states, he said, have three standards by which a person can be civilly committed to a mental health institution: If the person is deemed to be a danger to himself, if a person is deemed to be a danger to others, or if a person is “gravely disabled” by his mental illness. Arizona, adds a fourth standard: If the person is “persistently or acutely disabled.”
What that means, Arnold said, is that without treatment, the person is “likely to become dangerous.”
… “It’s almost criminal the way the laws deal with mental illness and the treatment of the mentally ill,” said Doug Reuter, who plans on becoming a registered lobbyist to push for a change in the laws. “You can’t look to someone who is mentally ill to make reasonable decisions. Once they’re off their meds for a couple of weeks, they’re no longer capable of making reasonable decisions. … The government has to say, ‘You’re not capable of making that decision. We’re going to make it for you.’”
