I receive emails and letters from parents and family members who have tried to get their loved ones help by having them involuntary committed into a hospital only to be stopped by our legal system. One of the sadder notes came this week from a father whose daughter was so sick that the psychiatrist who first examined her and the independent examiner appointed by the court to review her case quickly agreed that she needed to be hospitalized.
But when the young woman appeared before a special justice here in Fairfax County, Virginia, he ignored the two professionals’ recommendations and released the woman because, in his opinion, she did not pose a danger either to herself or to others.
“Where did this dangerousness criteria come from?” the frantic father asked me in an email.