I. Voluntary Patients

If you agree to be admitted to a hospital for treatment, you have the right to leave the hospital upon your request to be discharged. You should state your request clearly to the supervisor on duty. If you are not released promptly, ask to speak to an administrator.

However, you should know that if the hospital considers that because of your illness you might be a danger to yourself or others or cannot care for your basic needs, they can start an emergency hold. This would allow them to keep you at the hospital for up to 72 hours, excluding weekends and holidays, and request that you be examined by a designated examiner. If the examiner agrees with the hospital staff, a petition for commitment may be filed with a court and you may be committed involuntarily.

II. Involuntarily Committed Patients

You may have a legal right to be discharged from the hospital if:

a) You were wrongfully committed; or

b) Your condition has improved to the point where you no longer require hospitalization.

Idaho law requires the hospital to review your case within 90 days of your commitment and at least every 120 days thereafter. Under Idaho law you have three potential legal remedies to attempt to secure a release: filing an appeal of your commitment order, filing a petition for redetermination or filing a writ of habeas corpus. These are explained below.

A. Appeal of Commitment

In order to be involuntarily committed to the hospital, the court must have determined that you:

a) were mentally ill; and

b) because of that illness, were either likely to injure yourself or others, or were gravely disabled.

In reaching this conclusion, it is possible that the court made certain mistakes or "errors." There are two basic types of errors: "errors of fact" and "errors of law." If either or both of these errors occurred, then you may have been wrongfully committed.

The appeals court can only overturn your commitment and order your discharge if it believes that the decision to commit you was "clearly erroneous." This means that the appeals court cannot order your release unless it believes that there was not enough evidence to commit you. Thus, even if errors of fact occurred, if there was still sufficient evidence to commit you apart from these errors, the court's decision was not clearly erroneous and the appeals court will not overturn your commitment.

2. Errors of Law

Errors of law occur when the court misinterprets or misapplies the law. For instance, if the court allowed irrelevant evidence to be presented at your commitment hearing, then the court made an error of law.

If the appeals court determines that an error of law occurred, it will overturn the commitment order only if that error affected a "substantial right." In other words, if the error was not significant enough to change the final decision to have you committed, the commitment order will not be overturned.

If either type of error occurred, you have 42 days from the commitment order to appeal your commitment to the appeals court. Failure to meet the 42 day deadline means that your appeal will not be heard and the commitment order will not be changed.

B. Petition for Reexamination

While you may not believe that your commitment itself was wrongful, you may believe that since the commitment hearing, your condition has improved to the point where you no longer require hospitalization. If this occurs, you should bring this to the attention of the hospital staff. If they agree with you, they should start working on your discharge.

If the hospital staff does not agree that you should be discharged, you have a right to petition the court for a reexamination of the commitment order and/or the conditions of your commitment. The court is not required to conduct such a reexamination if the petition is filed within 4 months from the initial order committing you to the hospital. You should be aware, however, that if the court conducts an evaluation and does not order your discharge, it is not required to consider another petition for at least one year. 

Whether or not the court orders your discharge will depend upon your current condition. Almost all the evidence concerning your condition will come from the hospital which has already decided that you should continue to be hospitalized. The hospital's evidence will most likely show that you should not be discharged. Unless you have significant additional evidence, it is unlikely that a court will order your discharge.

C. Writ of Habeas Corpus

If you believe you should be discharged and the hospital staff decides not to discharge you, you may file a petition for a "writ of habeas corpus" requesting that the court order your release. If you are disagreeing with the decision at a commitment or reexamination hearing, the appropriate remedy is not a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, but an appeal of the court's order. A writ is only appropriate if you believe the commitment is unlawful.

An unlawful commitment is one which is prohibited or unauthorized by law. For example, if you were committed without court action, if the court was not the proper court, or if the court process was defective in an important way, the commitment may have been unlawful. The commitment may also be unlawful if you do not meet the current legal conditions for commitment.

III.  Protecting Your Rights

To help you protect these rights, it has been determined by a court that you have the right of "access to the courts." This means you have a right to access legal information and an attorney provided free by the facility to assist you with preparing complaints or petitions (and responding the other side's answers) to be filed with the court regarding rights violations. Ask the facility's staff for information on this right.

This document was designed to answer questions concerning a patient's legal right to be discharged from a hospital. This document does not recommend that you pursue those legal rights in order to obtain your discharge. Usually the quickest and easiest means of being discharged is to cooperate with the hospital staff and comply with your treatment plan.

If you wish to pursue your legal rights regarding your discharge, you should contact the attorney that represented you at your commitment hearing, an attorney provided by the facility, or a private attorney. If you have questions regarding the information contained in this document, if you believe that your legal rights have been violated, or if you believe that you are being abused or neglected, contact: