Grieving Mother Held Against Her Will in Psychiatric Ward

I read an article this morning about a judge who ordered release of a grieving mother, Christina Schumacher, who was held against her will for more than five weeks in a psychiatric ward. When she separated from her husband last year, Ms. Schumacher made a comment to her sister “that she would kill herself if anything happened to her two children.”* The day after her husband killed their son and then hanged himself, the grieving mother’s doctor decided that she “needed to admit herself or be taken into custody.”*

Other people, however, thought differently. Vermont Superior Court Judge Kevin Griffin ruled that, “The court did not find, by clear and convincing evidence, that Respondent was a person in need of treatment at the time of admission or application, nor a patient in need of further treatment at the time of the hearing.”* Ms. Schumacher, said, “I am not ill; I…