Greetings, fellow Wernologists. Another psychiatric commitment saga is upon us, and like all things having to do with Lucas Colby Werner, it is a disappointment.
Lucas is, for the time being, in the hospital because he chooses to be. He’s treating the laughing academy like a resource, or a shelter. This isn’t uncommon.
For those of you who have never relaxed inside a mental hospital, the following may be of some interest. To get locked up for being crazy in Washington, you must be either: a) a danger to yourself, b) a danger to others, or c) gravely disabled. Lucas’s current stay is premised on suicide baiting: he would like people to believe that he is a danger to himself. He is not, and to the extent his stay in the laughing academy is based on the threat of suicide, it will be brief.
It has been discussed extensively elsewhere in this thread, but Lucas spent most of 2017 in Eastern State Hospital. This is extraordinary and unusual. Under Washington law, it takes very little for a doctor to order a 72 hour confinement. Following this period, however, it is difficult to confine a patient. A doctor may petition for a 14, 90 or 180 day stay, but each petition calls for a contested hearing, and the standard of evidence necessary to support confinement increases with each petition. Lucas did two consecutive stints in 2017, each in excess of 120 days. At the very least, a judge and a doctor did not believe that Lucas was fit to be on the street, and spent a lot of time and energy keeping him confined. That he was released was, in my opinion
Very little is known about why he was committed in 2017. Many Wernologists assumed that Lucas was a “danger to others,” specifically teen girls, and pointed to some alarming behaviors to support their claim. Lucas said in one of his videos that he was deemed “gravely disabled.” This would mean that he was in danger of serious physical harm due to his psychiatric inability or failure to provide for essential human needs like food, shelter, or medical care. For context, here are two examples of people found to be “gravely disabled” for the purposes of involuntary confinement:
- A 75 year old alcoholic with wet brain, who asks everyone he meets for cigarettes but is incapable of conversation, and has lost control of his bowels.
- A 20 year old with a profound learning disability, who suffers from auditory hallucinations, and has no caregiver or support network following the death of their mother.