VA panel to focus on psychiatric advance directives and other isses

A commission created to study Virginia’smental health system will examine the criteria used to force treatmentof mentally unstable people — a topic that has invited scrutiny since adeadly shooting spree at a state university.  Virginia’sinvoluntary commitment laws are among several issues a special mentalhealth commission of the Supreme Court of Virginia plans to tackle at ameeting Friday. The Commission on Mental Health Law Reform was createdlast year and has been working on a mental health reform package forthe state’s 2008 legislative session.  Thetopic gained urgency in April, after Virginia Tech student Seung-HuiCho killed 32 students and faculty at Tech before taking his own life.Cho had been ordered into involuntary outpatient treatment in 2005,after a special justice found that he presented “an imminent danger tohimself as a result of mental illness.”

Source:  MSNBC/AP, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19356421/