Some psychiatrists say that AOT simply doesn’t work. Civil rights advocates argue that the state shouldn’t have the right to deprive someone of their liberties with forced treatment. The law, however, is not without its critics.
Known as Laura’s Law, the bill allows courts to order what’s known as assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) to people with severe mental illness if they meet specific criteria, including previous hospitalizations or arrests, being noncompliant with outpatient treatment, and becoming dangerous to themselves or others. A bill in California could enforce this, but it had not been passed in Stanislaus County. What Misty needed, Linda believed, was a program that would require her to take the medications that had been helping her in Modesto without having to be admitted to hospital. Wandering the streets and shouting at strangers, without adequate food and water, didn’t qualify.
The only time she’s going to get help is if they put her in the hospital, and the only way they’ll put her in the hospital is if she’s a danger to self or others,” Linda says. Knowing where her daughter was, however, didn’t mean that she could help Misty, and she watched her daughter’s deterioration with horror and fear. She filed a missing persons report, and the next time police picked up Misty for her latest infraction, Linda got a phone call. Not surprisingly, she didn’t take her medications once out of hospital, and the cycle repeated itself over and over.īack in Modesto, Misty’s mother, Linda, felt her worry turn to panic as the days passed without word from her daughter. By now, Misty no longer recognized that she had a health problem. Her memories of this time are vague at best, but hospital records show a series of psychiatric hospitalizations during July and August. Misty’s worsening mental state left her combative and paranoid.
In the sweltering July heat, Misty roamed the streets of Santa Monica, trying to grab a few minutes of shut-eye where she could. The longer she went without her cocktail of antipsychotics to keep the worst symptoms of her schizoaffective disorder at bay, the more difficult it became to remember that she even needed medication. With no money in a strange city, Misty found the bus system too confusing to navigate.
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