Eduardo Vega, executive director of the Mental Health Association of San Francisco, and Catherine Blakemore, executive director of Disability Rights California, write in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The prevalence of mental illness across the world varies somewhat, with prevalence in the United States being slightly higher than most others. But the prevalence of homicides by civilian gun violence is completely different. On that measure we stand, tragically, far and away above other developed nations . . . (but the proposed law) does not create new or better services for people who are in need – it prescribes instead a bureaucratic, legally questionable process to compel these people, under threat of police force and involuntary hospitalization, to accept the same services that have failed them before.”
Voluntary Mental Health Services Will Deliver Better Outcomes (San Francisco Chronicle)