New California law aims to force people with mental illness or addiction to get help

Define mental illness, define addiction, define help, define force.

They're gonna use this to jail and subjugated the unhoused populations aren't they?

The new law, which reforms the state’s conservatorship system, expands the definition of “gravely disabled” to include people who are unable to provide themselves basic needs such as food and shelter due to an untreated mental illness or unhealthy drugs and alcohol use. Local governments say current state laws leave their hands tied if a person refuses to receive help.

The law is designed to make it easier for authorities to provide care to people with untreated mental illness or addictions to alcohol and drugs, many of whom are homeless.

I work in mental health in another state, and I’ve been wishing for a law like this since I started my career. I don’t believe people who have any sort of mental illness should be forced into treatment, but laws enacted at the behest of rights groups for the mentally ill have gone too far (although it’s certainly better that we have those laws than don’t). Some people are so sick they’re their own insurmountable obstacle to care, and that would be fine if their condition only affected them, but it often doesn’t. For their sakes and that of those around them, I agree some people should be forced to get their issues treated.

expands the definition of “gravely disabled” to include people who are unable to provide themselves basic needs such as food and shelter

So if you can't afford rent in CA, you are gravely disabled.

Sounds like a 'great' idea. All cops have to do is say you misuse drugs or alcohol or get a someone to diagnose you with a mental illness and BAM your no longer free. I see no possible way for this to be abused. /s

Forcing people is always the best way to get good results. 🙄

*** EDIT - Too many here seem to have forgotten that asylums were shut down in the 70's and mental health patients shunted onto the streets to live without support networks in place.

Stop trying to recreate those monstrosities.

Forcing people to get help doesn't help if that help isn't actually available. I've had several issues over the years seeing a therapist because there is so much demand and very few therapists. Most of my appointments are rescheduled 6 months away, multiple times because I show up and the doctor is called away.

Maybe if you hadn't axed mental health services in the 80s this paradox wouldn't have arisen.

While this might be an important tool to help many who need it, I can't help but wonder if this essentially criminalizes opting out of capitalism. Anyone that is homeless and uses drugs or has a mental illness can now be involuntarily committed, denying them the right to decide on that sort of life.

Sure is neat what Newsom doesn't veto.

They're criminalizing mental illness. That's California for you.

IS THIS THE EPISODE OF TREE HOUSE OF HORRORS WHERE FLANDERS IS SUPREME LEADER AND LOBOTOMIZES THE TOWN

Love what I'm seeing out of California

It's what needs to happen.

People who can not abide by the social contract (whether by mental illness, addiction, or otherwise) can not be given the same freedom as people who can. They will likely abuse it for their own destructive aims. They need to be forced into rehabilitation, or, if they can't be rehabilitated, a separate housing place.

But...

Those services they need are either overwhelmed or don't really exist in many places, because none of us taxpayers want to spend the money to actually build them, or allow them next to our house. Which is fucked up. And it's clear that nobody is going to willingly increase their taxes to do something about it. So, what then?

I think it needs to be declared like wartime. Set aside a certain area, get as many help people as possible, and move these people over to basically a modified refugee camp, with what basically amounts to martial law to keep the peace as much as they can. Yes, it'll be tents and sleeping bags, which is not good, but they need something. Don't be like the NYC hospital law that sends them in for three days and lets them go back out to the street, because that helps nobody.

the part where smarmy lemmy posters recoil but people with actual drug addiction experience think "hey, yea thats a good idea". did you guys know there's a reason you aren't in charge?