WA families are using ‘Joel's Law' for involuntary commitments more than ever

Yahoo

30-03-2025

Tatiana Leone at her home in Bremerton on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Meegan M. Reid/Kitsap Sun)
Tatiana Leone never leaves her Bremerton apartment without a reusable grocery bag filled with documents detailing her son's history of mental illness. She doesn't know when she will run into her son, who lives unhoused in Seattle, and she wants to be prepared if he's in a crisis.
She's used the pile of documents — including records of his behavioral health history, jail stints and hospital stays — once before. In 2020, she successfully asked a Pierce County judge to involuntarily detain her son, whom she asked not to be named to respect his privacy, under Washington's Joel's Law. Leone, like others caring for loved ones experiencing acute mental illness, had spent many painstaking years trying to get her son help, only to find a fractured and complex mental health system that did little more than send her son to jail. She felt like she had exhausted all other options.
'It's a gut-wrenching process because you don't want to alienate your loved one and make them fear you or that the world is against them because they're already thinking that in some cases,' Leone said. 'You're just trying to help.'
Joel's Law, which passed the state Legislature with overwhelming support in 2015, was designed to provide a lifeline for parents like Leone who wished to directly petition the judicial system to get their loved one into treatment. Typically, designated crisis responders — mental health professionals who act as a bridge between the medical system and the courts — are the ones to recommend involuntary detainment if they believe someone's behavioral health conditions meet the state's legal criteria.
While the law was celebrated for helping to elevate the voices of concerned families, petitioning the court is just one step in a long, complicated process that might not ultimately lead to treatment or sustained support, as Leone and others have experienced. Only three days after Leone's son was detained, he was released from the hospital and was back cycling through the same systems as before.
Joel's Law petitions comprise only a small portion of all involuntary detainments in Washington, but the number of cases involving the petitions has increased statewide by 266% since 2020, according to state court data obtained through a public records request. Much of that growth has been concentrated in the South and Central Puget Sound areas. Pierce and Kitsap County, where Leone attempted to get her son detained, have among the highest per-capita rates among Washington's large counties.
Medical professionals, mental health providers and lawyers have a longstanding disagreement over involuntary treatment, especially in Washington, where physicians are not allowed to make that call. Some medical professionals and families feel the system is antiquated and leaves too many people without care until they ultimately wind up in the criminal justice system.
A decade since the law was passed, the use of the petitions is increasing, though questions remain about how much these petitions have helped make treatment more accessible to families. Those skeptical of the law acknowledge there needs to be more access points to behavioral health care but question if involuntary care is the appropriate response or if many of these people could be more effectively treated in the community.
Tara Urs, special counsel for civil policy and practice for the King County Department of Public Defense, feels for the family members submitting these petitions, knowing that the supports available outside of the hospital doors are difficult — and at times impossible —— to access.
'I understand why people might want to be banging down the only door that might be available, even though I think it is the wrong door,' said Urs, who represents people facing involuntary detention. But the state must meet a high burden of proof before taking away someone's civil liberties.
'Joel's Law increased the kinds of people who could try to access the front door of the hospital, and for King County, I'm not sure how much of an impact that's made,' she added. 'But I don't think that means that there's not a problem worth solving.'
A group of parents, frustrated that their loved ones with acute mental illnesses were not getting help, pushed for the passage of Joel's Law in 2015. Doug and Nancy Reuter, whose son Joel became the law's namesake, helped bring attention to the issue. Seattle police fatally shot Joel, a 28-year-old software engineer suffering from bipolar disorder, in 2013. The Reuters said they tried 48 times prior to that standoff to get their son help.
'What was happening everywhere — and I certainly heard about it in our area — was parents would be told, 'Well we can't do anything until they break the law,' even though the parent knew the child was in grave danger of hurting themselves or somebody else,' said Kitsap County Commissioner Christine Rolfes, a former state senator who was a co-sponsor of the bill creating Joel's Law.
Michael Kawamura, who oversees Pierce County's public defender office, suspects the high number of Joel's Law petitions filed in Pierce County could be due to the county being home to the largest psychiatric hospital in the state, Western State Hospital. A person can be held up to five days for an emergency detention, potentially followed by a 14-day treatment with additional 90- or 180-day extensions. With each extension, a new petition must be filed with the court, which could increase the number being filed in Pierce County.
'The majority of counties don't do most of the long-term commitments,' said Kawamura, who helps oversee cases involving Joel's Law petitions. 'That's just the hospital jurisdictions. And so most of the counties will do that initial 14-day commitment, but then they stop.'
Providers attribute much of the increase to more awareness. Police and mental health workers are educating families about Joel's Law, and in some areas, the complex process to file a petition has been streamlined.
'It's 10 years old,' Jenna Vyhlidal, manager of mobile crisis outreach at Kitsap Mental Health Services, said of Joel's Law, 'but I think we're finally starting to make it work.'
Dr. James Hughes, chief medical officer at Kitsap Mental Health Services, speculates that some of the difference between counties can be attributed to differing interpretations of state statutes. State laws on involuntary detainment are vague and open to nuanced interpretation. The definition of 'imminent' — a requirement for someone to be involuntarily detained — is an example of that.
'I've heard it used differently by different counties or even different institutions,' he said.
Kitsap is among the counties where crisis responders are permitted to do single-bed certifications, allowing them to detain someone at a local hospital if no inpatient psychiatric beds are available throughout the state. Kitsap also permits non-emergent detention, letting crisis responders petition to detain someone who is not yet an imminent threat to themselves or others but is showing signs of a deteriorating mental state.
'It lets us do our job but prevent future [crises] so we're not five days behind,' Vyhlidal said.
By design, medical providers have few options to force a patient into treatment, especially in Washington. The state's Involuntary Treatment Act was established in the 1970s amid the national 'deinstitutionalization' movement that sought to release hundreds of thousands of people held in psychiatric hospitals and move away from the system that gave doctors the sole power to strip someone of their civil liberties.
'If I agree their loved one is in need of help, I can't make them get it. I have to defer to somebody who did not see you in your acute crisis and may not have the same perspective on medical care or training as I do as the ER clinician caring for you,' said Nathan Schlicher, an emergency room physician who lives in Gig Harbor and is a past president of the Washington State Medical Association. 'That is the unique nature of Washington law.'
When Leone's son's mental health conditions started to escalate in his late teens, she didn't know where to turn. She had brought him to the emergency room during a handful of episodes but was often turned away. She had heard of designated crisis responders but was told that the only way to get her son evaluated was to call the police. She tried this numerous times, which often led to him being taken to jail, she said.
'He really just needed help and intervention,' she said. 'It didn't help my son at all, because oftentimes, while in custody, their solution for people in mental health crisis is solitary confinement, and that's not helpful either.'
On Christmas Eve in 2020, Leone's son was in acute crisis, in a state of heightened fear and expressing thoughts of self-harm. Leone brought him to St. Anthony's Hospital in Gig Harbor in hopes that he would be seen by a designated crisis responder from Pierce County instead of in Kitsap County, where they had been evaluated previously but involuntary detainment was not recommended, she said. While she was out getting her son warmer clothes, a designated crisis responder came and went without recommending involuntary detainment. Her son then ran away.
She was angry with the hospital staff for letting him walk out the door in the middle of a snowstorm. They told her there was nothing they could do. Not knowing what to do next, Leone drove to a nearby Target parking lot and called the police. 'My son happened to bump right into me in a Target parking lot,' she recalled.
While Leone was on the phone with the 911 operator, her son was talking about harming himself. She asked the operator if she could hear his comments. 'One of the (designated crisis responder's) had told me that unless we hear him say he wants to kill himself to us, or unless we hear it with our own ears, we cannot just take anybody's word for it.'
The next thing she knew, police were surrounding her car. The 911 operator told her that they would contact the designated crisis responder to come out. Instead, they arrested him and charged him with domestic violence, which prohibited him from contacting Leone. She had told the officers that she wasn't in danger. 'I am not afraid of my son,' she recalled telling them. 'I called you to help him.'
'It was unbelievable,' she said. 'I am his only support system. He doesn't have a dad, he doesn't have any other family or anybody else who advocates for him. So they alienated him from his sole support network.'
After he was taken to jail, Leone called the crisis line back.
That's when she was told about Joel's Law. She says she 'thought it was going to be the answer we were looking for.'
Families have 10 days after a designated crisis responder evaluates their loved one to file a Joel's Law petition with a judge. The petition includes the reasons the family believes someone should be detained. That often provides a more comprehensive look at someone's history than what a designated crisis responder can necessarily see at the moment, said Vyhlidal, the Kitsap crisis outreach manager.
'I've seen petitions go back to childhood photos,' she said.
When a judge grants a Joel's Law petition, the same process follows as when a designated crisis responder detains someone. They are held for a maximum of 120 hours (plus holidays and weekends) during which a mental health professional decides if they need to be committed for longer.
The day after Leone's son was taken to jail and she learned about Joel's Law, she started gathering the hundreds of documents she was told she needed to file the petition, including documentation of hospital stays, jail stints and admittance to crisis care. The process was arduous.
She was told she had to file the petition in person in Tacoma, but she couldn't get out of her driveway due to snow. She took an Uber to a FedEx store in Bremerton and spent $200 faxing the documents to the court.
They ultimately approved her petition and served him the paperwork when he was in jail. She said it was painful not to be able to reassure him given the protection order stemming from the DV charge. When she finally spoke to him, he was rightfully upset, she said.
'He thought that I was just out to get him and take him down, which was part of his symptoms, too,' Leone said. 'Which kind of makes sense looking back, because his intuition is telling him something was wrong, and he doesn't know where to look for the source of this feeling, and so everybody becomes a suspect.'
After three days in the hospital and one day back in jail, he was released, and Leone felt like she was back to square one. 'I thought they had said that they were going to keep him until he was stabilized,' she said.
Silvia Riley, the director of crisis services at Multicare, is lukewarm on Joel's Law. It is not a bad policy, she said. Designated crisis responders, while highly trained, make mistakes. But she wants judges to apply the same scrutiny to petitions that designated crisis responders do to their evaluations. Detention should be a last resort.
'We show up with the intention of [involuntary commitment] being the last thing we want to do,' she said. 'It's not always a popular decision, but we take it very seriously.'
Judges, she argues, feel compelled to help individuals experiencing severe mental illness, often receiving thick petitions documenting someone's whole and often traumatic history. But while many people need behavioral health treatment, designated crisis responders often disagree that an involuntary approach is the best method for that care.
For example, MultiCare was once asked to detain someone but could not serve them because they were at work every day.
'That itself tells me that this person is not a good candidate for involuntary commitment, because he's living productively,' she said, adding later: 'It makes me question, is this the best way to get them help? Or are we missing some opportunities in the community?'
The practice of involuntarily detaining someone at a mental hospital has a dark and not-so-distant history. For example, women were frequently institutionalized in mental hospitals for not being submissive enough to their husbands. It's why the bar is so high for committing someone, Urs said.
Urs wants to see a more holistic approach to mental health treatment and sees the conversation mainly focused on 'how open or closed' the door to the hospital should be. Some efforts have given her hope, like King County's Program of Assertive Community Treatment, coined the PACT program. The program, which Urs describes as a 'hospital without walls,' is tailored toward people with psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and schizoaffective bipolar disorder. Still, the program only scratches the surface.
'We don't have nearly enough PACT teams in King County to meet the needs of the people in our community who are experiencing disorders of psychosis,' she added.
Any time it snows, Leone is always out searching for her son in Seattle, distributing food and supplies to other unhoused people during the process. When he calls from a borrowed cellphone or from jail, she begs him to call more to let her know he's OK. If there's time, she tries to convince him to go to a crisis care center. She said he feels trapped at treatment centers and has lost faith that medication will help.
Leone isn't sure whether she would file another Joel's Law petition again, but she hasn't completely ruled it out.
'The hope was that he would be able to obtain some relief from his symptoms and then be able to develop some appreciation for knowing what it felt like to not be suffering from those symptoms, and then building that rapport with him would help him be more receptive to staying in compliance with the treatment plan,' Leone said.
She understands why Joel's Law is controversial. It's something she has to grapple with frequently.
'They can't just go around taking people's rights away' or 'involuntarily medicate people,' she said.
Ultimately, she wishes they had better access to mental health services before it got to the point of using a Joel's Law petition. Or, that there were court advocates available to help families navigate the Joel's Law petition process.
She said each time they tried to get help — whether it was at the hospital or through a designated crisis responder or crisis care center — the relief was fleeting and the web of bureaucracy pushed her son further away. 'He wanted the help, but he was also able to see that every time somebody was promising to help him, it was only hurting him,' she said.
It's all taken a toll on Leone.
'I get a lot of 'Just let it go. He's choosing this. Just let it go. He likes this lifestyle. He's choosing this lifestyle.' And it's infuriating because it's like, no, he's just as in need of help and support and unconditional love as anybody who has got some physically evident disability or impairment or illness.'
Anytime Leone is able to find her son on the streets of Seattle, he is always happy to see her and his little brother, Leone said.
'He'll open his coat, and he'll bust out a Batman action figure, and he'll be like, 'I've been carrying this around for you.'