������Ƶ

I believe that the intent of , Relating to Assisted Community Treatment, is to meet the basic mental health needs of people who suffer from severe mental illness.

People struggling with severe mental illness may be incapable of even brief, coherent conversations with anyone, let alone an attorney or judge in a court of law. My own personal experiences with a family member struggling with severe mental illness prompted me to submit testimony in support of HB 345 this legislative session.

It was a long, expensive, arduous and painful process to have the Caregiver Foundation (a local nonprofit) assigned to my 80-plus-year-old uncle as a legal guardian. My uncle was a Vietnam veteran who struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. After he had a mental breakdown, he was uncooperative and very adamant about refusing any medical care to address his paranoia, hallucinations and the “voices” in his head.

My uncle stopped talking to all family members and soon forgot the names of his friends and neighbors that he had known for almost three decades. I continued to visit him at his apartment building, but he refused the groceries that I brought. I pleaded with him numerous times to get medical help, but he would always say, “Caroline, you’re not a doctor. Go away.”

My uncle would not have qualified for the MH-1, Involuntary Application for Mental Health Evaluation, because he didn’t attempt suicide or commit a violent crime. My uncle would also not have requested the MH-2, Emergency Psychiatric Examination, to voluntarily commit himself and have the police transport him to a medical facility.

Even if my uncle had qualified for the MH-1, the doctors would not have been able to get him to open up and discuss his broken state of mind. I know this because every time he went to the emergency room, he refused to speak to the attending physicians because he didn’t want to be evaluated and committed to a psychiatric ward where he feared that communists from Vietnam would torture or kill him.

Soon my uncle stopped paying his rent and his bills. He could have easily been evicted to aimlessly roam the streets even though he had a full pension from the Air Force, Social Security benefits and owned a parcel of land on a neighbor island.

His sister took over his rent and bills so that he would have a place to live. This went on for a few years until my uncle’s landlord died and the surviving relatives wanted to sell the apartment. At that point, my uncle needed a psychiatric evaluation to determine his competency level since he refused to move out.

Fortunately, it was determined that my uncle was no longer competent. Then the Caregiver Foundation became his legal guardian and tried to relocate him to a new residence. However my uncle repeatedly trespassed to get back to his old apartment and the police were called numerous times to remove him from his old high-rise building.

Eventually the courts ordered monthly injections with a sedative so that his 24-hour caregivers (paid for by his own retirement and assets) could care for him in his new apartment.