Word: zdanowicz
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...very interesting intersection of these issues," Mary Zdanowicz, director of the Arlington, Virginia-based Treatment Advocacy Center, said. From the "easy" commitment laws in the first half of the 20th century, the pendulum has swung over the past couple of decades to the point that it has been increasingly more difficult to get a troubled individual committed involuntarily, she said. Now, she argues, the pendulum is starting to swing back in the other direction. "From my perspective, it's a good thing," Zdanowicz said...
...Advocacy Center has been pressing for that "equilibrium" in state laws so that troubled individuals can be ordered into treatment, particularly when they fail to take their medications or exhibit potential for violence or self-destruction. Zdanowicz believes that some states rely on arcane law enforcement language to set out standards for involuntary commitment - in Virginia, for instance, the person must be adjudicated to be an "imminent danger" to himself or others. The center endorses more flexible language found in states like Arkansas and Wisconsin, where a judge is allowed to determine if there is a "reasonable probability" someone will...
...before this week's horrifying events at Virginia Tech, the rewriting of Virginia's commitment laws was already a major focus of a yearlong study of the state's mental health laws launched last fall by Leroy R. Hassell Sr., the chief justice of the Virginia State Supreme Court. Zdanowicz, who serves on the task force, said the chief justice had become concerned that the criminal justice system was, in effect, becoming the state's mental health care system, where jails are poor substitutes for failing and too few mental health care facilities. The Cho shootings will bring even closer...