Application for Certification of William R, In re

• Decision Date: 12 March 1958
• Citation: 172 N.Y.S.2d 869,9 Misc.2d 1084
• Parties: Matter of the APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATION OF William R. _____ To a State Mental Institution As An Alleged Mentally Ill Person (Hearing
• Court: New York Supreme Court

Page 869

172 N.Y.S.2d 869

9 Misc.2d 1084

Matter of the APPLICATION FOR CERTIFICATION OF William R.

_____ To a State Mental Institution As An Alleged

Mentally Ill Person (Hearing March 12,

1958, at Kings County Hospital).

Supreme Court, Special Term, Kings County, Part II.

March 14, 1958.

BENJAMIN BRENNER, Justice.

Voluntary transfer to a state mental institution upon a pink sheet form pursuant to section 73 of the Mental Hygiene Law was not requested of the aged senile as to whom this application is directed, apparently because he is ninety-six years of age. This was fortunate for the senile because it made a judicial hearing possible with the result that happily his daughter has now agreed to provide the custodial care that he requires.

The patient is described as having a happy mood with 'gross memory impairment'--quite understandable for a man of his great age. The diagnosis is the usual one, namely, chronic brain syndrome associated with cerebral arteriosclerosis. The added phrase 'with psychotic reaction, mild' is the diagnostic phrase currently used to insure qualification for admission to a state mental institution. Yet all that the senile concededly needs is custodial attention in a hospital for the aged which is unavailable because the state and local governments have thus far failed to adequately supply such facilities.

I have previously called to the attention of the organized Bar (see N.Y.L.J. Editorial 1/29/58) that the pink form is being increasingly used by the Department of Mental Hygiene for the transfer and admission to state mental institutions, without judicial consideration, of most of the senile aged who do not make positive objection, and that it accounted for more than 1,000 such transfers within a period of nine months in 1957 from Kings County Hospital alone. I pointed out that this is a development of recent date, conceived as a technique for circumventing judicial sanction, due to much criticism by judges and doctors alike of certification procedures of aged seniles to state mental institutions as being morally wrong. This newly used technique effectively shunts seniles into involuntary confinement without awareness by them of their plight and without their actual approval or judicial surveillance. These unwanted seniles may not even hope to escape factually involuntary confinement because the possibility of private care, often provided at a judicial hearing, is denied to them and, of course, they cannot thereafter effect their own release.

Moreover, the denial of judicial hearing or sanction is based on a statute of questionable constitutionality because it is grounded on a fictitious consent given by one who concededly is confused and disoriented. Even if positive objection is not required by the Mental Hygiene Department, the consent thus extracted is dubious because the senile is not likely to understand that the admitting institution is a mental institution, even if he be told that it is. Often he is chagrined and humiliated...