Collateral Calls in Emergency Psychiatry: Reconstructing Informant Information Under New York's Emergency Admission Standard

Stephan M. Carlson, MD, MBA, FAPA · Emergency Psychiatry and Civil Commitment

An emergency psychiatric admission is often built on a phone call—from a spouse, a group-home aide, a mobile crisis team, an outpatient clinician. When that admission is later litigated, the forensic question is rarely whether the call happened. It is whether what the caller reported, and how the clinician used it, supports the legal standard the disposition was made under. The standard the collateral has to satisfy In New York, the most common emergency-psychiatry pathway is admission under Mental Hygiene Law §9.39, which permits a hospital to receive and retain a person alleged to have a mental illness for which immediate care is necessary because the person poses a "likelihood to result i

Most relevant service: Risk & Civil Commitment Assessment