investigating and exposing crimes in mental health 
Child Involuntary Commitment in Florida
Florida’s latest news on involuntary Commitment of Florida’s children!
More than 3 children out or every 1000 Florida children, on average were involuntarily committed in 2007!
What could possibly justify an average of 52 statewide mental health commitments, of children, to facilities per day?
Over 3000 separate incidences of children being escorted from school grounds to a psychiatric receiving facility and held in a secured ward, separate from their parents, and without parental consent, in one year.
A child is considered to be 4 years old up to 17 years old. Children younger than 4 years old are not considered to be involuntarily committed under the Baker Act.
The Florida Mental Health Act (The Baker Act) Report for 2007, states that “some people have many involuntary exams, with 18% of people with two or more in 2007”. (The 2008 report will be released soon).
At the Citizens Commission on Human Rights of Florida, a non-profit mental health watchdog organization, we continue to get calls from distraught parents who have just found out their child was removed from school and placed in a psychiatric ward. Some of the “reasons” for these Baker Acts would simply astonish Floridians. For instance, an eight year old boy who stomped on an administrator’s foot; an eleven year old who had a fist fight with his cousin in the playground; a straight “A” student who skipped class and was administered a mental health questionnaire that, when evaluated, deemed she was a potential risk to herself.
The Baker Act report for 2007 concluded that “of 1,000 people aged four and over in the population, 4.44 of them had at least one involuntary examination in Florida in the calendar year 2007, 3.49 out of 1,000 children (4 though 17)”. So, 3 out of every 1000 Florida children, on an average, will have an involuntary commitment!
Parents have the right to be informed and to understand that, via school intervention programs, your child may be evaluated and if a psychologist or school personnel or even another child (who then reports their observations to a school psychologist), deems that your child is a behavioral risk, a potential risk to themselves or others, they are liable to the Baker Act.
The peculiar and troubling aspect of involuntary commitment is that if a person does, in fact, pose a threat to himself or others, what are you or anyone else to do with them. Maxine Baker, the legislator who presented this mental health act and saw to its enactment, had in mind that isolating a person who did pose a real threat to themselves or others, was indeed a practical thing to do. She did not have in mind that the scope of this act be used to “discipline” children.
Like many other issues in the field of mental health, such as the unscientific diagnosing and labeling of children, the use of psychotropic drugs, Electro-convulsive therapy, mental health screening, etcetera, we are currently at a point in our culture where we would be wise to get educated about our rights.
To learn more about Florida’s Baker Act-go to www.cchrlflorida.org or call our hotline at 800-782-2878