Mental Health
DRC works so people can have mental health services and supports so they can stay out of institutions. We enforce people’s rights in institutions. To find out more about our work in this area, keep reading.
DRC works to ensure that people with disabilities have access to mental health services and supports to enable them to live in the community and avoid institutionalization. DRC works to ensure patients’ rights in mental health facilities are not violated. This includes county mental health facilities and state hospitals.
Our Mental Health Team also does a substantial amount of advocacy in Jails and Juvenile Halls (find out more about our detention facilities work).
We represent clients on systemic issues and write materials to help people with disabilities self-advocate.
Fresno County Juvenile Justice Campus
Disability Rights California (DRC) and Youth Law Center (YLC) visited the Fresno County Juvenile Justice Campus (JJC) for two days, May 23-24, 2017. Over the course of the following year, DRC and YLC reviewed the County’s public records and wrote a public report which sets forth findings and recommendations.
Suicides in San Diego County Jail: A System Failing People with Mental Illness
DRC visited the San Diego County Jail, talked to prisoners and staff, and looked at records. DRC found problems with the way prisoners with disabilities were treated. DRC wrote a report about what we learned. Below you will find more information about this work.
Napper v. County of Sacramento
Photo: Left to right are client Leslie Napper, (Napper v. County of Sacramento) mental health advocate; Tiela Chalmers, executive director of the Volunteer Legal Services Program of the Bar Association of San Francisco; and Steve Cuellar of the Disability Rights Legal Center, based in Los Angeles.
Napper case update: Sacramento County outpatient mental health services likely to continue until October
Disability Rights California and Sacramento County entered into an interim agreement in a class action case concerning the county's outpatient mental health services. A federal court had determined that the County's plan to cut outpatient services placed mental health clients in the County at risk of in-patient hospitalization.
K.G. V. Meredith
Pleadings
A state appeals court ruled that the county of Marin improperly approved drugs to treat mental patients without first determining whether they were capable of making an informed choice not to take the medications.