Kenneth Donaldson v. J. B. O'connor, M.D. And John Gumanis, M.D.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

This case requires us to decide for the first time the far-reaching question whether the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees a right to treatment to persons involuntarily civilly committed to state mental hospitals. The plaintiff-ap-pellee, Kenneth Donaldson, was civilly committed to the Florida State Hospital at Chattahootchee in January 1957, diagnosed as a “paranoid schizophrenic”. He remained in that hospital for the next fourteen and a half years. During that time he received little or no psychiatric care or treatment.

Donaldson contends that he had a constitutional…