Therapists can commit people and are legally obligated to if there's reason to believe the person is an imminent threat to himself and others.
In my limited and somewhat removed experience, it can be extremely difficult to have an adult "committed" in Canada, and I doubt it's any different in the US. Even if there are HUGE warning signs, previous criminal convictions, and violent incidents.
A good friend of mine from high school had a younger brother a couple years younger, who was a totally normal, cool guy in his late teens. He started to go weird when he was 18-19. At a house party I threw while the parents were away one time, he was getting on just about everyone's nerves, asking them really weird, "deep" questions about them and just not letting shit go. Long story short, I hear a commotion and end up finding him on the front lawn beaten to hell by another one of my friends who he picked a fight with. He just picked the wrong guy. Shit like that continued to happen. He was visiting family in Australia and apparently beat the hell out of a cop or security guard or some shit, but was able to get off and get on a plane home. A couple years later he was expelled from college for stalking a teacher who he claimed to have had a sexual relationship with (but likely didn't). That went as far as her having a restraining order against him, and him breaking it and getting his ass thrown in remand with gang bangers and thugs.
At that point it had become pretty goddamn obvious that he was schizo. That shit, and I'm sure more, happened in a period of 3-4 years. And yet his family had an extremely difficult time working their way through the system to get him committed both for his own safety (so he wouldn't get shanked in remand, as he had already been getting in more fights) and his future (so he could avoid significant jail time for his stalking, and hopefully get treatment). It got to the point where his sister called and asked me to contact a friend of my dad's, who was actually the head of the mental institution where he was being evaluated at to see if there was anything he could do to help the process. Obviously he didn't tell me anything, but he took the guy's name, looked in to it, and called me back to let me know that he was being overseen by a good physician and that the wheels were turning.
Basically it took his family the better part of a year to get him forcibly committed against his will, despite his history of violence and criminal convictions, because he was refusing treatment and wouldn't acknowledge his issues. And this was a good family with the resources to pursue this kind of thing. In that time, it's entirely possible that he could have done a lot more harm to himself or someone else. Thankfully, 7-8 years on, he's responded reasonably well to treatment. I'm not sure if he's still committed or if he's living in the community now, but I do know for at least 5 years he was in a high security part of the facility, and to even attend his sister's wedding there were four beefy dudes shadowing him the entire time. Shit's a sad story.
So yeah, navigating the system and having someone committed is possible, but it's not easy and it's not quick.
Weaponsfree_sl said:
This wouldn't be a failure for mental health professionals. This was a failure in parenting, there is very little a therapist could do about this without the kid admitting he was going to shoot people.
I'm curious how you figure that this was a failure of parenting? Do you think that they caused or were responsible for his mental illness? Or do you think that they should have done more to get him committed? I don't think it's fair to blame the parents at all in this situation, from what I've read. They did try to get their son help, repeatedly.
