Thursday, March 29, 2018

In Re Conservatorship of P.D. (Cal. Ct. App. - March 29, 2018)

"P.D. suffers from schizophrenia. He was arrested for violating a restraining order that protects his family. The court found him incompetent to stand trial. It committed him to Sylmar Health and Rehabilitation Center for mental health treatment to restore his competency. After the criminal charges were dismissed, Public Guardian filed a petition for a conservatorship on the ground that P.D. is gravely disabled as a result of his mental disorder.

Murray Weiss, M.D., testified that P.D. was diagnosed with a mental disorder 10 years earlier, has delusions, and requires medication to control his symptoms. When not taking his medication, P.D. becomes angry, aggressive, and “impulse disordered.” Dr. Weiss said that P.D. does not accept his diagnosis and believes his medications are “poison drugs.”

Dr. Weiss opined that P.D. is unable to provide for his basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter as a result of his mental disorder. Without a conservatorship, P.D. will stop taking his medication and be “homeless and hungry and living from day-to-day and probably arrested for violating the restraining order when he goes back to his family residence.”

P.D. testified that he does not suffer from a mental disorder and does not need to take medication. He said that if released, he will return to his family or seek help from unnamed friends, none of whom he has contacted to discuss his plans. He denied the existence of an active restraining order which prevents him from contacting his wife and which formed the basis of his prior arrest."

You can probably figure out the rest.  Suffice it to say, P.D. remains in the hospital.  As he probably will for a long, long time.