LPS Conservatorship experience?

My daughter has been off antipsychotic medication for two years and has gone into a serious delusion that her family are the cause of her homelessness. We are abusers, she’s adopted etc. It changes according to the little information we can glean. She has severed all contact for two years but we have been able to track her occasionally through missing person reports. This delusion happened twice before and on both occasions hospitalizations with involuntary medication brought her back to reality and connection to family.
She was recently hospitalized in CA and despite my giving this history to doctors and admin people that involuntary meds was needed they refused to go that route. We found out that after four weeks she was released to a shelter. She is still not in touch with anyone.
The admin at the hospital talked “process” with me about LPS but clearly eventually decided not to go that route - so my daughter never got the help she needs.
I’m wondering if I had engaged a lawyer at that time to push the conservatorship would that have made a difference. It seems the psychiatrist has to be the one to file - how do you press for that? Right now I don’t know where she is but would like to have my “ducks in a row” should another opportunity occur
Any experience with this would be helpful.

This definitely a difficult situation. I’m not sure all of this applies to your situation but here are some thoughts.
It sounds like you do not live in CA where your daughter is located, right? I would find out how the process works there. Maybe through contacting NAMI in that state? We found out the difference between two states that a person has be hospitalized by a judge and the other state only requires only a psychiatrist.

Also the last time our daughter was hospitalized our older daughter hired a lawyer (expensive) in the state where are daughter is living. He dealt with what he calls a three legged stool and without all three, things don’t work as well.

  1. hospitalization 2. medication 3. outpatient care
    If a person receives the first two and there is NO followup it makes it harder to continue the needed care for the person.
    Also this second time when I was with my daughter and she was on the phone with her therapist who convinced her to go to the hospital and get evaluated. Someone outside of the family is important but I was the one who drove her to the hospital. It isn’t easy whatever happens as you know an adult child can’t be made to do what they don’t want to do and of course, the dear HIPPA laws aren’t helpful at times.

Finally family support has been of an upmost importance. I, as her mother, have been with our daughter many times before and after her hospitalization. It takes time and money but so worth the cost of a valuable person.
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And alongside of all of this self care is so important and I continue to work on this myself. Yes it’s exhausting.
Blessings, Julie

Julie1,
Thank you for your considered response. Totally in agreement with all you say here. Unfortunately the situation has proved impossible to resolve through the “normal” route as suggested. Although what is “normal” is under question!
The only people who can help her are her parents and we are, because of severe anasognosia
actually “imposters” who are trying to kill her so absolutely no contact has been possible despite many attempts.
In the two previous similar situations court ordered medication has brought her out of these intense delusions and returned her to her family happily.
But how to get a psychiatrist to act on this? Hence looking to conservatorship which is in itself near impossible it seems.
Tigermom continues nonetheless.

I’m currently going through the process of having my son conserved by the county where we live in California. He’s in the hospital at the VA and has been there for almost two months while they have gone through the process of having him conserved. When he was first hospitalized, they asked me my thoughts on his status and I told them to conserve him. It’s the only way he can get the help he needs as he won’t take his meds voluntarily and becomes violent when he doesn’t take them. It’s very sad to have him stripped of his rights, but it’s a temporary process where he’ll be hospitalized until he’s better. He’ll stay out of jail. I hope this helps. Having the county conserve her is the best way to go because if you do it, there might be hard feelings. Im so sorry you are going through this and I hope this helps.

Charzweb67
Thank you for taking the time to respond to this post from last December. I’m happy to report thatI learnt a great deal about the process needed to get my daughter onto an LPS. So when she was again in hospital early this year I sent the list of 5150s that I knew about to the psychiatrist and appealed for guardianship which was granted long enough to get her on meds. From that point on her condition improved with post hospital support. She is now extremely stable, gets it about her condition and is back working as a mid-wife. Our family is reunited and we are truly blessed.

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I am so happy for you. Hugs and blessings and happy holidays.