VA panel to focus on psychiatric advance directives and other isses

A commission created to study Virginia's mental health system will examine the criteria used to force treatment of mentally unstable people — a topic that has invited scrutiny since a deadly shooting spree at a state university.  Virginia's involuntary commitment laws are among several issues a special mental health commission of the Supreme Court of Virginia plans to tackle at a meeting Friday. The Commission on Mental Health Law Reform was created last year and has been working on a mental health reform package for the state's 2008 legislative session.  The topic gained urgency in April, after Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty at Tech before taking his own life. Cho had been ordered into involuntary outpatient treatment in 2005, after a special justice found that he presented "an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness."

Source:  MSNBC/AP, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19356421/