Summer 2022
This Summer 2022 issue of SMI Advocate covers legislative news from April 5 to June 29. We are celebrating the enactment of eight bills that will reduce treatment barriers for people with severe mental illness (SMI) in five states and have many updates to share.
Four states made significant changes to their civil commitment laws. The Louisiana State Legislature enacted a bill establishing a psychiatric deterioration standard for inpatient civil commitment to make treatment possible sooner. The Maine Legislature authorized funds to remove a legal and cost barrier to outpatient civil commitment. Legislatures in Arizona and Colorado also enacted laws changing civil commitment processes.
Our advocacy work to eliminate the shortage of psychiatric beds and demand an end to the discriminatory institutions for mental diseases (IMD) exclusion continues to make progress. The Colorado General Assembly passed legislation making substantial investments in both civil and forensic psychiatric beds, taking an innovative approach that can serve as a model for other states confronting the bed shortage. While applying for an IMD SMI waiver is an administrative process, legislatures can pass bills to require agencies to apply for waivers. The Missouri General Assembly included language in their state budget requiring its Medicaid department to apply for an IMD exclusion waiver.
While most state legislative sessions have adjourned, six states remain in session, including Ohio and California. A bill that would establish a psychiatric deterioration standard in Ohio's civil commitment law was reported out of committee and will likely be considered by the Ohio House of Representatives this fall. The California State Legislature is prioritizing addressing untreated mental illness and homelessness this session and considering a number of bills in the area of civil commitment. These include Gov. Gavin Newsom's CARE Court proposal as well as a bill to expand the definition of "gravely disabled" in the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act.
This spring, Treatment Advocacy Center continued to advance federal legislation and initiatives to reduce barriers to treatment for SMI. We have worked with congressional staff on bills to fund assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs, repeal the discriminatory IMD exclusion, reform and decriminalize the nation's crisis response system and increase research and knowledge of SMI.
The deadline for states to launch the federally-mandated 988 crisis hotline for mental health emergencies is just two weeks away. Treatment Advocacy Center partnered with NAMI and Cicatelli Associates Inc. to host an online training, "Crisis Conversations Problem Solving Convening," to help prepare advocates working to ensure the SMI community is included in planning and implementation.
We could not do this work without you, our partners on the ground advocating every day to fix our broken mental health system. Thank you for taking the time to join us in our advocacy campaigns. This quarter, we ran state campaigns on key legislation in California and Louisiana, and you sent a total of 326 messages to your lawmakers. Visit our Action Centerfor a list of active campaign and contact your lawmakers today!
We hope you find this summer issue of SMI Advocateinformative. If you missed the previous issue, check out ourSpring 2022 edition. We had a busy and successful winter and early spring, when seven states enacted bills making substantive improvements to civil commitment processes!
If you have feedback on this publication or would like to share information about a bill in your state, we would love to hear from you! Contact Legislative Advocacy Manager Clara Keane at keanec@treatmentadvocacycenter.org.
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David Geiger is a licensed and retired professional electrical engineer who spent 7 years in psychiatric hospitals and over 40 years since 1979 in the courts because of his schizophrenia. He began writing about mental illness and criminal justice reform in May 1998. He writes about his illness in his book In the Matter of Edwin Potter as well as those who have the illness and are caught up in the criminal legal system.