Compulsory Treatment

Crazy. That’s how some people describe California’s treatment policy for mentally ill people who are not in a hospital. In many cases, there is no treatment at all, unless the mentally ill seek it for themselves, voluntarily.

The problem: many people who are mentally ill do not always know that they need treatment. Critics say the lack of involuntary outpatient care for the mentally ill is leading to tragic consequences.

A U.S. Justice Department study in 1994 found that one in every 20 homicides was committed by an untreated or under-treated mentally ill person.

State Assemblywoman Helen Thomson, a former psychiatric nurse, is the author of a new bill that would make it easier for courts to order treatment, and for communities to provide treatment to people with mental problems, on an outpatient basis.

California Connected discussed the issue with Assemblywoman Thomson and with Al Bowman, the husband of a woman with a long history of mental illness who is now facing a murder charge with “special circumstances”, which means she will be eligible for the death penalty if the prosecutor decides to seek it and wins a conviction.

Bowman’s wife, Marie West, allegedly murdered a 65-year-old man, Jesus Plascencia, by running over him with her car outside a bagel shop in Van Nuys.

Because Plascencia was Hispanic, and police said she made anti-Hispanic comments to them after she was taken into custody, West was charged with a “hate crime” murder. Her husband says she was in the middle of a severe manic episode, one of many in recent years during which she is completely out of touch with reality.

Bowman says that if outpatient care had been more readily available for his wife, she might be a free woman today, and Jesus Plascencia might still be alive.