“Too many people in San Francisco are falling into crisis when intervention could — and should — come sooner. At the center of this effort is a simple reality: Stability is the gateway to recovery,” Lurie said. “For many people with severe mental illness, medication is what allows treatment to work at all. Without it, housing placements fail, care plans break down, and crises repeat themselves — often with greater harm each time.”
Involuntary commitments and forced treatment of mental health in California have long been controversial. And past attempts by the city to place those struggling with mental health issues into involuntary medical treatment have been called “disappointing” by city leaders — in part due to a shortage of facilities that can specifically address the combination of mental illness and addiction.
Officials are hopeful that this addition of medication authorization will provide care to individuals who may not need a full conservatorship.
“We certainly do not have the beds or the staffing capacity to provide full-blown conservatorships for all of those people,” Mandelman said. “So, this is a less-intrusive intervention to get medical care through assisted outpatient treatment to people who could benefit [from] it.”
