Antipsyehotic medication outside of emergency situations

The Rogers Guardianship statute law requires a separate adversarial court proceeding in order to treat a patient with antipsyehotic medication outside of emergency situations, even after that patient has been found dangerous enough — to themselves or others — to be civilly committed by the court to a hospital.

The law that remains most problematic in the treatment of these illnesses is the Rogers Guardianship statute.

The intention of the statute — to preserve a patient’s right to refuse medication — is well-meaning.

However, in practice, it falls short in recognizing that a patient’s refusal of medication may reflect their underlying disease state. Paradoxically and poignantly, it is a symptom of psychotic illness to believe you do not have an illness.

Rogers Guardianship proceedings are fraught with challenges. 1When they occur within a psychiatric hospital via the district court, the approved antipsychotic treatment plan lasts only during the hospital admission. The patient is free to discontinue medications at the time of discharge.

In the community, the treatment plans authorized in probate courts last for one year and then expire, obliging the process to be repeated. Further complicating matters, the law requires a court-appointed guardian to manage the antipsyehotic medication decision-making.

The process of identifying a guardian and scheduling a court hearing can be delayed for months, or even years. As a consequence, patients with mental illness often go untreated for long stretches of time while awaiting hearings and approvals.

And even if the Rogers Guardianship is authorized, there are few protocols in place to ensure that a patient take medication for