From what I can remember Chris is incapable of creative thought. Everything he imagines is at most a distorted derivative of a cartoon, sitcom or other flavor of soy slop.
Not so much incapable as too lazy.
It bothers me that many speak with such assuredness on these hypothetical events when so few facts are available to the public.
Few specifics on Chris' specific case are available¹, but standard legal operating procedures are well known and well documented.
Who would have thought that crazy people would act crazy and not take the pills the doctor told them to take?!
Especially when the doctor is
required by law to tell the patient they don't have to take their meds. Because dignity? For reasons, surely.
Don't get me wrong - the kooky anti-psych left was complicit with Reagan in all of this.
Oh for fuck's sake. The movement to shut down asylums started long before Reagan was even governor of California, and continued long after he was gone. Rose Kennedy was its poster child back in the 1960s. Also it happened on a state by state level, not federal. Yes he signed the bill in California that closed a lot of California asylums in favor of "community mental health care", but the California democrats had the numbers to push the bill through over him regardless. And yes, federal funding was cut for "community mental health care" while Reagan was president, but only as part of more general reversals of unaffordable Carter era largess. This was back when the government would actually tighten its belt instead of printing money out of nothing to pay for everything with inflation. How's that money printing thing working out, by the way?
I know people like using Reagan and the Republicans as boogey men scapegoats for the unintended consequences of their own schemes, but do please try to place credit (and blame) only where it's due. The worst damage to our mental health care systems have always been the result of meddling do-gooders who either tear down the existing systems as inadequate only to replace them with… nothing, or think they can solve the problem by throwing ever increasing amounts of money and bureaucracy at it so they can feel good about themselves without ever having to look too closely or get their hands dirty.
They can’t just release Chris without securing him housing of some kind. (A certain Rob Bell played a part there!)
That's the jail's problem, not the court's. And they only have to try for 30 days before tossing him out the door.
Sure, but if he gets 10 years, he is going to be in with some sort of hardened criminals.
Chris would be going to Marion, not Red Onion. He'll be surrounded by hardened crazies like himself, not hardened criminals.
Most likely he'll be released to a contained managed care tard home so his own tugboat will pay for his upkeep instead of the Virginia DOC. At least until he fucks up again.
the Mental Health Systems Act, a 1980 law
Was an unworkable one size fits nobody clusterfuck of pork that did more harm than good. It was based on the asinine, feel-good idea² that all mental health cases can be rehabilitated. Some can. Some can only be managed. Some can't even be managed, just contained. If it hadn't been repealed, we'd be blaming Reagan for not repealing it instead.
The only good thing in it, the patient's rights bit, was not repealed.
Mental health has to be handled on an individual, case by case basis by people qualified to handle it, not politicians or bureaucrats.
tl;dr: There is no legislative solution to mental health.
¹
That's about to change.
²
As if the people who came up with disco have any business making mental health decisions.