I have had the dubious honor of being held against my will TWICE due to (gross misinterpretation of CA 5150 - Psych Hold because the patient may be suicidal.
Now, the good Governor has signed SB128 - provide lethal dose (barbiturates, AIUI) to patients wishing to kill themselves.
If SB128 is, as critics allege, a camel’s nose under the tent, we may yet get to the point of “Death” being a choice presented to many/most/all patients/people you know/You/Your Loved Ones.
Here’s the issue:
Is CA 5150 the proper way to deal with suicidal patients?
Is SB128 the proper way to deal with suicidal patients?
CA5150 is deeply rooted - all medical persons police, educators, who knows who, all are defined as “Mandatory Reporters”.
SB couldn’t even be implemented before some “doctor” and some “patients” sued to overturn.
Second issue - something like 3-5 states have some form of “Assisted Suicide”.
Could we really be starting to recognize death as an acceptable option for some people?
Will it sometime be possible for a husband of 50 years to put a bullet through the shell which once held the person he loved WITHOUT it being a "Police Matter:?
The difference in mindsets between 5150 and SB128 is breathtaking.
If I was struck by a disease that blinded me and crippled my hands, I would be locked up if I suggested “This is no way to live”.
Unless I had < 6 months left, in which case I could simply keep my mouth shut until discharged, then request the barbiturates.
The point is a 180-degree turn of opinion of death as a medical choice.
It was once (5150) ALWAYS suppressed. Now it is accepted, but with so many restrictions as to be all but useless.
It is not hard to imagine those restrictions being loosened over time.
Q: Should they be loosened? How far? Who should be allowed the option of death at the hand of his PCP?
A further topic would be the bizarre “updates” to some (reactionary) states’ laws in response to the advent of “Doctor-Assisted” suicide.
Did they really need to make up special punishments for MD’s who “provide the means of death”?
Right now, as our society is in flux about whether or not to keep people alive at all costs, the overall effect is schizophrenic.
The 50 US states each have attitudes, and legislation to match, all over the map. California happens today to have conflicting laws enacted at various stages of the evolution of thought on the topic. As always with legislation, there is no physics-based requirement that the whole thing be coherent or consistent. Better legislative workmanship will have fewer contradictions. But zero is a desiderata, not a guaranteed outcome.
So here we have two laws. One says “If you want to stop living OK, we’ll help*” And the other says “If you want to stop living OK, we’ll absolutely prevent you from doing so.” Schizophrenic.
The * is the big message. It really says "we’ll help [sub]under certain very limited circumstances chosen mostly for reasons of compatibility with Medieval Christian Outrage.[/sub]
As a starting point in turning the supertanker it’s unsurprising. As a place for society to stagnate at and perhaps operate for many years, it’s both tragic and infuriating for folks that fall just short of the specific approved reasons yet fall well within the conditions that motivated the legislation in the first place.
Mandatory reporters don’t have the authority to declare a 5150. I’m an ER nurse and neither myself or the doctors I work with can. We can, under certain conditions, hold you until the psych team arrives, perhaps a matter of hours, but it’s not uncommon for them to release someone we thought should be held.
It had been years since I had encountered the young idealistic MD’s found in hospitals.
These are the ones for whom Death is the absolute, to be fought to the end, Enemy.
Something of a shock for one who is becoming quite comfty with the concept of “death as a relief”.
I will never see it in the US, but I do hope, with the advent of Barbies-on-Demand laws, the concept of death being viewed as a reasonable “medical option”.
We also have Palliative Care (often called “Hospice”) in which death is no longer fought with all resources, just ushered in painlessly. We are also (gasp!) allowing the terminally ill to actually leave the hospital and be in familiar surroundings and with familiar people.
Again, it is almost like death is an accepted outcome. My parents would have never expected any of this.
I’m glad I have seen it.
And: I never even hinted that a Mandatory Reporter had the authority to restrain. Maybe that is why they are called “reporters”, not “police” or “judges”.
The Mandatory Reporter is the perfect example of the scope of the concept of “wish to die” as “sufficient to support a diagnosis of Mental Illness”. The concept of CA 5150 and its brethren in other states.
We have transformed a Public Servant into a spy for the enforcement of a law.
How many laws have that range of enforcement.
For that matter, how many laws seek to enforce “illness as a crime”?
A person who can be involuntarily committed is not a person who would be able to choose assisted suicide, assuming the CA has the same procedural safeguards as every other jurisdiction that has done this.
Moreover, the only people who can choose assisted suicide are those who are on course to die anyway within 6 months.
So I don’t think the OP’s juxtaposition of the two laws makes much sense.
That kind of non-comprehension is exactly the core of the problem.
If someone is terminal and miserable but has longer than 6 months to live, that person is barred from help. That’s cruel, evil, and IMO wrong.
If someone is terminal and miserable but is too physically helpless to self-administer, that person is barred from help. That’s cruel, evil, and IMO wrong.
If someone is terminal and miserable but is too mentally helpless to decide to self-administer, that person is barred from help. That’s cruel, evil, and IMO wrong.
That a person in any of those circumstances who stated a desire to die would be declared a suicide risk and therefore incompetent and therefore barred from help is a GIGANTIC Catch-22.
If society cannot recognize that catch-22, society is willfully blind. Note that’s different from deciding the catch-22 must be corrected.
Clearly today correcting the catch-22 is a controversial idea, favored by many and abhorred by many. But asserting “there’s no disconnect here” isn’t stating a matter of opinion. It’s asserting willful blindness to an obvious fact.
Any drastic measures taken to protect someone who is suicidal (i.e., detaining him against his will) will likely deter suicidal people from actually seeking help.
5150 and other similar statutes are designed as a “cooling off period;” to prevent someone in the throes of a psychotic (or other decision debilitating) episode from doing something rash. The assisted suicide statutes are designed to give people options on how the end of their life plays out. All of the A.S. statutes I’ve read include waiting periods, medical evaluations, familial consultation, etc. . .they’re not intentionally designed to pass judgement on which type of life is suitable for living and which is not.
It’s a matter of time and contemplation.
While granting that the 6 month timeline is an arbitrary one negotiated by competing political spheres without any psychological or sociological basis, the above is just wrong. Asking for help outside of what’s allowed by the new law would no more get you declared incompetent than asking for a DNR.
Your second scenario I expect to get challenged under the ADA in due course.