Nick Reiner placed in mental health conservatorship in 2020: report
Global News
Nick Reiner allegedly switched schizophrenia medication one month before he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his parents.
New details have come to light about Nick Reiner’s mental health in the years before he was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of his parents, Rob and Michele Singer Reiner.
According to a report published by the New York Times on Thursday, Reiner, 32, entered into a mental health conservatorship in 2020 that ended in 2021. The outlet cited confirmation from a clerk at the Los Angeles Superior Court.
Reiner’s appointed conservator, Steven Baer, told the outlet that mental illness “is an epidemic that is widely misunderstood, and this is a horrible tragedy.”
Reiner was allegedly put under an L.P.S. conservatorship — based on a 1967 law, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act — that established a new process for involuntary psychiatric treatment in California, according to the report.
A conservatorship, known in some states as a guardianship, is an involuntary status usually reserved for senior or very ill people who are suffering from dementia or otherwise incapacitated and unable to make decisions for themselves. (Singer Britney Spears was famously under a conservatorship for 13 years.)
L.P.S. conservatorships typically originate from an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and are initiated by a doctor.
The conservator makes decisions about medical matters, such as treatment and medications for the person under conservatorship, which typically lasts one year before the conservator may seek renewal.
Two people familiar with Reiner’s health spoke with the New York Times on condition of anonymity and alleged that Reiner had been diagnosed at different times with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental illness blending symptoms of schizophrenia with mood disturbances.
