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Involuntary Commitment for Mental Disorder: The Application of California's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Carol A. B. Warren
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Abstract

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One hundred persons who were committed involuntarily to mental hospitals on 72-hour holds under California's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (1967), and who filed writs of habeas corpus, were observed during petition hearings. Involuntary commitment criteria were frequently “bargained down” from dangerous to others, dangerous to self, and gravely disabled during the 72-hour hold to gravely disabled at the petition hearing. Most frequently used criteria for continued hospitalization as gravely disabled included prior hospitalization, refusal to take medication, and failure to cooperate with the hospital system. Persons adjudged dangeros to self were generally suicidal in action or talk. Although a minority of persons judged at the petition hearing to be dangerous to others were assaultive or threatening, evidence for the imminence and seriousness of dangerousness was not offered.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 11 , Issue 4 , Spring 1977 , pp. 629 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health Crime and Delinquency Section, Grant No. 1 ROI MH27846-01. I should like to thank the many persons who took time to go over drafts and make suggestions during the writing of this paper: Richard Abel of the UCLA School of Law, Alexander Brooks of Rutgers Law School, John Monahan of the Department of Social Ecology at UC Irvine, Elizabeth A. Thompson of the USC Sociology Department, Judge Robert S. Thompson, Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeals, and Barbara Underwood of Yale Law School.

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