Illinois Petition For Involuntary Admission To A Mental Health Center

The State of Illinois has a special procedure in place to protect socitey from the dangerously mentally ill.  If California has such a statute and had enforced it, perhaps they could avoid the horrors we saw in the Santa Barbara shootings.

Illinois

Illinois, like every state, has its own civil commitment laws that establish criteria for determining when court-ordered treatment is appropriate for individuals with severe mental illness who are too ill to seek care voluntarily. The state authorizes both inpatient (hospital) and outpatient (community) treatment, which is known in Illinois as "involuntary admission on an outpatient basis."

For inpatient treatment, a person must meet the following criteria:

• be a reasonable expectation of danger to self/others
• be unable to provide for basic physical needs so as to guard against serious harm without the assistance of others, OR
• refuse or not adhere to treatment, unable to understand need for treatment, and, if not treated, reasonably expected to suffer mental or emotional deterioration and become dangerous and/or unable to provide for basic physical needs

For outpatient treatment, a person must meet the following criteria:

•  in the absence of outpatient treatment, meet criteria for inpatient commitment; and outpatient treatment can only be reasonably ensured through court order; or
•  mental illness left untreated reasonably expected to result in qualification for inpatient commitment, and has more than once caused the person to refused needed outpatient care

State standards for emergency hospitalization for evaluation and state-by-state information on initiating emergency hospitalization and assisted inpatient or outpatient treatment can be found from our Civil Commitment Laws and Standards page.

Visit Get Help for tools and information about preparing for and handling a psychiatric crisis.

Visit Get Involved for information about how you can help bring down barriers to the timely and effective treatment of severe mental illness.

http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=209&Itemid=144

In practice, a person admitted under this statute  can be held in a State Mental Hospital, such as Chicago-Read Mental Health Center in Chicago for up to five days for evaluation. At the end of that period, if they have not been adjudged by a Court to be a danger to themselves or others, they must be released. Of course many are released at an earlier time if it becomes obvious that they do not belong in a hospital setting.