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Hawaii's legal standard for the involuntary commitment and treatment of people with mental illness is the central question in this 1996 episode of Price of Paradise. Attorney David Rammler, of the Protection and Advocacy Agency of Hawaii, argued that his legal obligation is to enforce his clients' rights rather than act in their best interest, a distinction he acknowledged could lead to difficult outcomes. Physician Stephen B. Kemble, who holds a joint appointment in medicine and psychiatry at the University of Hawaii, described cases in which strict adherence to patient rights produced harmful results, and argued for a degree of judicial flexibility. Fran Smith, Executive Director of the Oahu Alliance for the Mentally Ill, emphasised the need for more community services and assertive case management rather than greater reliance on coercion. Family Court judge John Bryant, reached by telephone, explained that constitutional case law requires a finding of imminent dangerousness, not merely obvious illness, before a person may be involuntarily committed. Randolph Hack, executive director of United Self Help and himself a person with experience of involuntary treatment, stressed that forced psychiatric procedures constitute a significant curtailment of liberty and carry historical risks of abuse.
Transcript
Read or download the full transcript (.txt). Speaker labels were assigned automatically and may contain errors.
Companion newspaper commentaries
Commentaries by the guests, published in The Honolulu Advertiser around the broadcast.
