I think there is often very little one can do to get help for a large, violent child living in their home. Psych holds are generally 72 hours, the police can't keep them in jail until they commit a serious crime, you can't force them to take their meds and group homes and residential care are often on wait lists or not covered by insurance. Our system's way of dealing with mentally ill violent youth is to do little to nothing until a serious crime is committed.
It always pains me to see mental health treatment not explained by professionals and consequently, misunderstood by the public.
That's not a slight against you at all. I'm just saying the medical community has done a poor job of explaining this so there are a lot of misunderstandings for that reason.
Let me address in general why the system is the way it is. And understand that I think we need improvements, but my idea of improvements are in the broader sense and may not have impacted the outcome of this case.
The truth is that a psych hold is not 72 hours. It's actually much longer WITH EVIDENCE that someone is dangerous. That's the key. They can keep you (in most states) for 72 hours for an
evaluation. That's all the 72 hours refers to -- evaluation. That's it. After 72 hours, if the patient doesn't want to be there, then there has to be EVIDENCE that they are dangerous and that their dangerousness is a direct result of a diagnosable mental illness. If there is evidence of that, then you can keep them for as long as treatment takes, by court order.
There's a very good reason for these restrictions. It's because before we had parameters like this, then mental health holds were a form of abuse executed by abusive partners, parents, or anyone else looking to exploit someone, and because with mental illness, there's no lab test that will show someone is unstable, they could get away with it. For example, say a family can't take their rebellious child staying out past curfew. They could make up "bizarre" behavior and have the child locked up indefinitely in a mental hospital. When it's two parents against one child, the system was geared to believe the parents. Say a spouse wanted their spouse out of the way, they could have that person locked up based on behavior they claimed, even if the spouse (patient) didn't demonstrate that behavior when in mental health custody.
These are the types of abuses that could happen if we go back to the way things were. People even with anxiety could be locked up on a psych ward for months or years if there's no barriers to holding them. That's why laws were enacted to protect people from abusive psych holds, and most of the time, those laws work. Sure, there are times when people, like this kid in VT, fall through the cracks. But like with all laws, we have to take the good with the bad. You'll never hear about all the people saved by the 72-hour laws because those stories generally don't make it into the media, but they exist. I've seen them myself -- custody cases in which psych is used against one parent, step-parent/step-child conflict in which step-child is a "problem" and needs to be put away, etc. Laws are there to protect these individuals and that's important.
I'd also say that we need to be careful in terms of labeling this kid until we have a confirmed diagnosis which we may not. Not every criminal/murderer is mentally ill. Not every weird behavior is diagnosable mental illness. The statistics tell us that only 1% of the population has schizophrenia. Of that 1%, less than 15% ever get violent. Of that 15%, even less (I don't have the exact number here) ever murder anyone. So statistically speaking, it's very rare that someone has schizophrenia. It's very rare that someone has schizophrenia and demonstrates violent behavior. It's very rare that someone has schizophrenia and kills someone. In my experience, most people with schizophrenia are so paranoid that they become reclusive and fear being around people. Most don't have the skills to defend themselves or fight. A lot of these people who are untreated are terrified of just being in the world and they wouldn't hurt a fly. Yet, in the media and on public forums, it seems most murderers are labeled as having schizophrenia or some other serious mental illness when the truth is they're just plain criminals.