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Full-Text Articles in Disability Law
Between A Bed And A Hard Place: How Washington Can Keep Psychiatric Patients In Treatment And Off The Streets, Spencer Babbitt
Between A Bed And A Hard Place: How Washington Can Keep Psychiatric Patients In Treatment And Off The Streets, Spencer Babbitt
Seattle University Law Review
On February 27, 2013, ten psychiatric patients were being involuntarily detained in hospital emergency departments located in Pierce County under Washington State’s Involuntary Treatment Act (ITA). Despite the name of the law that authorized their detainment, these individuals were not receiving any psychiatric treatment during their confinement. Nor were they there as the result of a criminal conviction. The only thing these ten detainees were guilty of was being mentally ill. Under what is now considered to have been a misinterpretation of the ITA, counties across Washington had for years been confining mentally ill patients in hospitals not certified to …