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Your Legal Rights

Homeless and Mentally Ill: Is the CARE Act the Answer?

YLR Host Jeff Hayden and tonight’s co-host, Dean Johnson, are joined tonight by Dr. George Bach-Y-Rita, a recently retired psychiatrist and published author of scholarly journals and articles, who was board certified in psychiatry and in neurology and practiced medicine for some 50 years.

Homelessness has become one of the most visible and widely discussed issues not only in the bay area, but across the nation.

Last week Governor Newsom signed the “CARE Act” -- touted as both a new paradigm for mental health treatment and at least part of the solution to the problem of homelessness -- into law, permitting family members, first responders and “others” to ask the courts to create and enforce treatment plans for people who are allegedly mentally ill.

While the act has been touted as both a new paradigm for mental health treatment -- and at least part of the solution to the problem of homelessness -- civil rights groups and homeless advocates have suggested that the care act may mask a hidden agenda.