PH, Japan, US security partnership still...

Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. in Tokyo last February where he and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to strengthen the overall security cooperation between the two states through strategic reciprocal port calls and aircraft visits, transfer of more defense equipment and technology, and continuous cooperation on previously-transferred defense equipment, among others.

According to Manalo, there has been “steady progress” on the two states’ defense equipment transfer project. (PNA) n

“Expanding conservatorships doesn’t solve for those structural issues around the lack of housing and the lack of funding for treatment services,” said Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California.

Cabrera’s group also questions the premise that forced treatment works, and there is indeed little evidence that compulsory treatment for substance use disorder is effective, and some evidence that it could even be harmful.

Critics of involuntary commitment have questioned the California Legislature’s objectives. If the ultimate goal of forced treatment is to reduce homelessness — and ease the moral failing of ill people sleeping on the street or using drugs in the open — then lawmakers are writing the wrong prescription, they said.

“The problem of homelessness is that people don’t have housing,” said primary care physician Margot Kushel, director of the University of California-San Francisco’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

“If you had all the treatment in the world and you didn’t have the housing, we would still have this problem.”

Supporters of involuntary commitments say both are needed. Many of the California lawmakers backing expanded conservatorship and CARE Courts are also backing efforts to increase the housing supply, including a $3 billion bond measure for the construction of small, neighborhood-oriented residences for people with mental illness.

Nationwide, rents have risen more quickly than people’s incomes in the past 20 years, particularly impacting people who rely on a fixed income, such as monthly disability payments.

This article is part of a partnership that includes KQED, OPB, and KFF Health News. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism.