Competency, coercion, and risk of violence: legal intersects with fundamental issues of mental health.

On October 15, 1998, Marquette University Law School convened a symposium for consideration of the findings of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Mental Health and the Law, which has members in numerous locations throughout the United States. The symposium was attended by an interdisciplinary audience that included psychologists, psychiatrists, lawyers, judges, social workers, and mental health advocates. Advocated by Wisconsin Chief Justice Shirley Abra-hamson, who is a member of the Network and gave the keynote speech, the symposium seemed particularly appropriate to a jurisdiction where the legal rights of the mentally ill were articulated by the courts.! The format accommodated presentations on three research areas of the MacArthur Network: actual and perceived coercion in mental hospital admissions; the correlation between legal competency status and actual capacity to make treatment decisions; and the assessment of risk that a mental health patient will engage in violent behavior. 2 Among the lawyers who responded were noted criminal defense at-(expounding new standards for civil commitment procedures and adopting the least restrictive alternative form of constraint to protect the individual or others). Much of the basic material about the research project, presented here as the context for the symposium articles and these comments, is found on the Network's web site. former Wisconsin Director of Corrections Walter Dickey, mental health advocate Diane Greenley, and Milwaukee County's district attorney for the past thirty years, E. Michael McCann. Psychiatrist Dr. Darold Tref-fert, perhaps best known for his 1974 monograph Dying with Their Rights on, 3 and Villanova professor of psychology Dr. Kirk Heilbrun also spoke. Both prolific writers in the field, they expand on their responses to the MacArthur Network findings in this symposium edition. Perhaps the most moving of the presentations, however, was the presentation by Judge Maxine Aldridge White who spoke of her concern for people with mental illness both in the courts and in her personal experience. The Network was created in 1988 by the Board of Directors of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Consisting of researchers throughout the country, the Network's purpose was to develop new knowledge regarding the assumptions on which the law rests and the effects the law produces on persons in the mental health system. It was intended that the research would allow legislatures, courts, and administrative agencies to choose more effective policies, and would allow mental health and legal professionals to respond with more productive strategies …