You Can’t Detain Non-Dangerous Mentally Ill People: “O’Connor v. Donaldson”
In O’Connor v. Donaldson, decided on this day, the Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot confine a mentally ill person who is not a danger to the community and who can survive in the community by himself or herself or with the assistance of others.
Kenneth Donaldson had been held for 15 years in a Florida State institution for the mentally ill. He was confined with dangerously mentally ill persons in an understaffed ward that had only one doctor (an obstetrician) for about 1,000 inmates.
The Court: “May the State fence in the harmless mentally ill solely to save its citizens from exposure to those whose ways are different? One might as well ask if the State, to avoid public unease, could incarcerate all who are physically unattractive or socially eccentric. Mere public intolerance or animosity cannot constitutionally justify the deprivation of a person’s physical liberty.”
Read Donaldson’s story: Kenneth Donaldson, Insanity Inside Out (1976)
Learn more about the rights of the mentally ill at the World Health Organization: http://www.who.int/mental_health/policy/legislation/policy/en/