Families of people with mental illnesses are being “pushed to the margins,” a relative testified on Thursday before the House Health Committee, describing 15 years of living with a system that offers little help until a crisis turns dangerous.
“We’ve reached our limits. We love our people, but we can’t help them. There’s no one to protect us,” she said. “To obtain a court order for involuntary hospitalisation or even a mandatory psychiatric evaluation, the situation has to become dangerous first. We go to the police and are ignored; or told, ‘Come with us and we’ll arrest him.’”
She recounted cases where parents or first-degree relatives must stand in court “opposite their own loved one” to secure an involuntary-treatment order. “Some patients see their relatives as enemies. We live in fear of what will happen during the next psychotic episode… There is no one to protect us,” she told MPs.
Her testimony, delivered on Thursday, 16 October 2025, highlighted what she called a persistent pattern of institutional neglect toward families caring for people with severe mental health conditions.