Support Senate Bill 43

As a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and an active mental health advocate, I hear from family members whose loved ones with serious illness are at large at high risk in the community.

One was a mother whose daughter jumped off a freeway overpass thinking this was a shortcut to where she was going. She was discharged from the hospital paralyzed in a wheelchair, but could not be ordered into mental health treatment, because she was able to articulate a plan to meet her need for food, clothing and shelter, the current definition of grave disability. She subsequently died.

Another individual was released back to the street with a brain bleed having suffered an aneurysm. Yet another was homeless with untreated MS. And, a fourth left her housing and stopped treating a drug-resistant staph infection because she wanted to save money.

It is cases such as these that California Senate Bill 43, would address. The family members and friends of those in such circumstances ask nothing more than that their loved ones be permitted to survive another day to have a
chance for recovery. Senate Bill 43 would provide medically necessary treatment for those with such serious illness that they are unable to recognize their need for such life-saving care.