Can the Baker Act facility create Baker Act criteria to support a case to get a court order extending your detention?

Hello, everyone. It’s Mark and welcome back. In this video, I want to talk to you about a patient or in this case, your loved one, developing Baker Act criteria once they’ve already been detained and are in the Baker Act facility.

So let me let me sort of share a story with you. I had a call from a family. Their adult daughter was in her mid 20s, had gone to the hospital. She was complaining of anxiety and depression. Of course, once the hospital found out she had health insurance, that made her an immediate target to get detained. So initially, she had just gone there for really just seeking help. And what happened when she got detained. Apparently, a hospital psychiatrist met with her and told her she met criteria and she was being detained. She was held at the hospital for a couple of hours. She was in place in an ambulance, and then she was sent to a behavioral health facility.

So every county has at least one, if not two, designated Baker Act receiving facilities. And these facilities, more often than not, are far from pleasant places to be. They’re depressing. Sometimes the patient doesn’t get enough food or they don’t get the food they like. Perhaps they’re vegan, perhaps they keep kosher things of that nature, or they get forced to take medications they don’t want to take. They can be held down and ejected. But life in one of these facilities typically is not pleasant and far from it. And so what happened in this case. Is that over a period of a couple of days, she went from hoping to get out because, the hospital psychiatrist and the doctor at the behavioral health facility told them they would only be held for a couple of days and then they’d be free to go. Well, those couple of days came and went, and as a result, the depression, the anxiety that they had initially gone to the hospital became significantly worse. She had a reaction to one of the medications she was being forced to. Take, and she became a suicidal. And so what happened was the facility. Then went filed a petition for placement. And they based it on the fact. That she was now suicidal. And there was a hearing, and the judge decided that because she was now suicidal, in fact, I believe in one.

Case she’d actually tried to take her own life. The judge said no, she’s got to stay, and they ordered it to stay for 30 days. And so this is why I say. And I have said in many videos. The time is of the essence in these cases, because what can happen is that the facility where your loved one. Is being detained, where the patient is being held, can create the circumstances so that they have evidence and facts to support continuing your loved ones detention. Obviously, if things had gone, if we had moved the case quickly, if we’d been hired in the first 24 hours when she wasn’t meeting Baker act criteria and then we could get a hearing quickly. That would have changed things, but the circumstances were that we didn’t get retained for two or three days in when things started to go badly. Then it took another three or four days for us to get a hearing and by the time the hearing took place, the doctor was busy telling the judge that the client was suicidal and so that is what happened and it was tragic, but that’s what can happen in the facilities once they know that.

You have health insurance. And as I’ve said in other videos. They have a real money incentive to keep you. They’re going to do what they can if they’re a bad actor and not. Every facility, for the record, is bad, but the ones we deal with tend to be bad. They’re going to create the circumstances so that they’re can then build a case to keep you.

So time is of the essence. You’ve got to move quickly to get. Your loved one out or they’re going to become a permanent war to the state and they’re going to get stuck there.

So with that said, thanks for tuning in. See you in the next video.
Bye.