'Against their will': A proposed law would make it easier to detain people with mental illness
LOS ANGELES — When lawmakers, mayors, psychiatrists and mental health advocates gathered last month to unveil a bill that would "enact major changes to California's behavioral health law," they put into motion an annual ritual in Sacramento.
Updating the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act has long been the goal of critics who say the landmark 1967 law has become an impediment to providing mental health treatment for those most in need.
The author of the newest effort is state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman, D-Stockton, and her bill — SB 43 — arrives at a time when untreated mental illness is both a heartache and a frustration for families and communities throughout the state.
Eggman's bill would expand the criteria by which people in extreme psychological distress can be detained against their will by police, crisis teams and mental health providers. It is among recent attempts by lawmakers to make it easier to help individuals, many of them homeless, who are suffering from potentially life-threatening psychoses.
"The amount of work we have done since 2020 is huge, but it has not made a huge dent in helping the most ill," Eggman said in an interview. "We can't do it all through voluntary care. We need the full continuum of care — from prevention to early intervention, all the way to conservatorships — so
