With the support of a coalition of mayorsmental health advocates and California lawmakers, Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton) unveiled two bills Wednesday that would bring changes to the state’s behavioral health system.
The laws, proponents said, are designed to address the cycle many people with severe mental illness face between homelessness and treatment, emergency room filling and exhausting health care providers, while putting them at risk of incarceration, overdose or the dead.
Eggman and other speakers expressed frustration with the state’s inability to help its most vulnerable residents. An estimated 16% of adults in California are living with a mental illness, but more than 60% of those individuals do not receive treatment, according to a statement from Eggman’s office.
“The system we currently have in place allows people to deteriorate and fall apart and end up dying in the streets,” said Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who co-authored one of the bills . “Despite what some proponents say, it is not progressive.”
Senate Bill 43 would make it easier to provide mental health care to people who are unable to care for themselves. The other account SB 363would create “an Internet-based dashboard,” which displays the availability of psychiatric beds in institutions across the state.
“We’re still operating under laws that were a good idea at one point in our history and are now outdated and are a barrier to care versus protection for people,” Eggman said, in reference to the state’s groundbreaking legislation that regulates treatment. of mentally ill persons, the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act of 1967.
Referring similarly to the state’s “archaic laws,” Jessica Cruz, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness California, expressed the frustration of families struggling without support to help their loved ones.
“This law is important,” Cruz said, “that’s why NAMI supports it.”
By identifying a need for conservatoire reform, Eggman hopes to amend the 1967 law, which established basic criteria — being “severely disabled,” or the inability to provide food, clothing, or shelter — for intervention in the form of involuntary detention or custody.
But mental health providers and families have long argued that those criteria are too narrow and incapable of helping, leaving many with severe mental illness languishing on the streets without housing. For years, advocates have lobbied to expand the definition of severely disabled to include the inability to seek medical attention.
Eggman’s bill would allow a petition for conservatorship if a person’s mental or physical health is at “significant risk of serious harm” due to “a mental or substance use disorder.”
However, her commitment is not without precedent. For years, legislators have introduced similar legislation that has made no headway over concerns that such efforts would erode civil liberties. Eggman hopes her efforts will benefit not only from public frustration, but also from the momentum created last fall with the passage of Governor Gavin Newsom’s CARE Act, which mandates treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
The CARE law has faced opposition from a coalition of disability and civil rights advocates, who have filed a lawsuit to block the law, arguing that the system violates due process and equal protection rights under the state constitution. Eggman’s bill is likely to meet similar opposition.
“Disability Rights California opposes SB 43,” said Deb Roth, the group’s senior advocate. “The bill expands the definition of ‘severely disabled’ in a way that is highly speculative and will result in more people being imprisoned against their will and deprived of fundamental rights, including privacy and freedom.”
The advocacy group instead calls for investment in “more voluntary, culturally responsive mental health services and support to help people on the road to recovery while preserving their dignity and civil rights.”
As a companion piece of legislation, SB 363 aims to provide essential information to mental health providers seeking beds in treatment centers. The dashboard would provide real-time openings in inpatient psychiatric facilities, crisis stabilization units, residential community mental health centers, and licensed residential recovery or treatment facilities for alcoholism or substance abuse.
Such a database, according to Eggman’s office, “would help providers quickly find and secure treatment for clients in the right environment, reducing delays or lengthy emergency room stays.”
