And it’s a handy way too get a person’s 2nd Amendment Rights nullified. Meanwhile we see the truly needy among the homeless, populating jails and sharing healthcare facilities with the comparatively sane, posing danger to others and themselves.
This is an issue that should be given higher priority than it currently has (little to none).
Totally.
The problems that the state mental hospitals were suppose to help remain and the problems that they caused are still here as well.
We got the worst of both worlds.
We need to have a process for admitting people into mental hospitals that respects their rights and works under the principle of "someone may have made an error" to prevent people who should not be locked up from being locked up.
In my state we had a highly placed doctor who was involuntarily committing people who had "good insurance". These people were not a threat to themselves or others, they were often people who had a recent death in the family but were unmarried. Many of them found that when they got out (because their insurance ran out) they had lost jobs, cars, houses, pets and such. So the abuses of the system remain.
But try to get someone committed who has repeatedly shown themselves to be a danger by acts of violence against the public is a regular nightmare.