Members of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Santa Barbara County (NAMI SBCO) met via Zoom on Monday to discuss the limitations of the Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT), otherwise known as Laura’s Law, in Santa Barbara County as the piloted program enters its fifth year here.
The legislation, which was named after Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old woman who was fatally shot by a man with paranoid schizophrenia in Nevada City, was passed by the California State Assembly in 2002 and allows for individuals over the age of 18 who suffer from mental illness and are “unable to voluntarily access community mental health services” to receive court-ordered medical treatment.
While AOT has been implemented in Santa Barbara County since January of 2017, many members of the committee felt that there is not an adequate amount of resources made available to the community and that excessive red tape hinders the ability of the program to succeed.