Mental Health: Discharge And Readmission Do Not Extend Legal Deadlines

Legal Eagle Eye Newsletter for the Nursing Profession

May 1997 

   Quick Summary: To hold an individual on an involuntary basis, state law strictly requires that a formal petition be filed in court for a hearing regarding a long-term commitment for evaluation and/or treatment.

  The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, ruled recently that discharging an individual being involuntarily detained for emergency mental health evaluation to his family, so that the family could call the police to readmit the individual on an emergency basis to the same facility later the same day, was a "transparent attempt to avoid the legal consequences of the failure to follow statutory mental health commitment procedures."

   Shuffling an individual out and right back in again does not start a new fifteen-day period running. People ex rel. Noel vs. Jones, 646 N.Y.S. 2d 820 (N.Y. App., 1996).