NJ Senate panel OK's bill to force treatment on people with mental illness

From The Star-Ledger in NJ:

Four months after her brother was charged with murdering her mother and daughter in a fit of delusional rage, Loretta Largo helped persuade a legislative panel Dec. 8 to support a bill that would allow families to seek a court order to force a mentally ill loved one into treatment.

The woman, formerly from Galloway Township, joined by her husband her other brother, implored the Senate Health, Human Services and Senior Citizens Committee to give judges the legal authority to impose treatment on a person believed to pose a danger in the reasonably foreseeable future.

"My mother pleaded with him for years and year and years to get help, but Ronnie was a firm believer he didn't have a problem," Largo said, who flew up from Alabama to testify for the hearing. He didn't like taking his medication because it made him "jittery," she said.

The bill passed unanimously 10-0 and heads to the full Senate despite competing pleas from the mental health community who warned the bill would violate patients' civil rights.

Largo said her brother Ronald Weed still doesn't believe he is sick -- even after stabbing and bludgeoning his mother and 12-year-old niece to death and seriously injuring the 12-year-old's twin sister on Aug. 5. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Weed is being held on $1 million bail in the Atlantic County jail.

Largo said her mother's only option under the law was to lie to the police and tell them her son had threatened her -- a tactic she used in 2001 that got him committed to Ancora Psychiatric Hospital for three months. New Jersey is one of eight states that does not have an involuntary outpatient commitment law.

"She was about to have him committed again" before he "just snapped," Largo said.

The bill gives families another path, requiring the state Department of Human Services to create a screening system under which licensed mental health professionals, with the help of family members, would evaluate patients who present a danger to themselves, others or property because they refuse to take prescribed medications.

A judge would need to sign an order committing a patient to the "least restrictive" inpatient or outpatient regimen, depending on the level of risk.

The bill was first introduced in 2006 following a recommendation from Gov. Richard Codey's Task Force on Mental Health.

But George Brice of Willingboro, a member of Codey's task force, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 28 years ago, argued against the measure. He said it wasn't fair to force people into treatment when the mental health system is "swelling with people" and can't accommodate those who want help.

Brice also predicted people with serious mental illnesses, already stigmatized by their illness, will be fearful about coming forward for help. "Putting this in the hands of judges makes this more about criminalizing people with mental illness," he said.

Committee members agreed the bill is not a cure-all but a necessary first step.

"This is a step that is needed, but we need to do more more," Sen. Diane Allen (R-Burlington).