During the House Health and Human Services Committee hearing, Jones stressed that the legislation was a starting point for discussion.
“We want and welcome constructive criticism, and we also welcome solutions to problems you think we’ve overlooked,” Jones said.
The 74-page measure comes as a result of recommendations from the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, which has developed more than 50 proposals to amend Georgia’s laws. Ralston’s office estimates that if the law becomes law, it will cost about $29.7 million a year.
Almost every speaker at Wednesday’s three-hour hearing had a personal connection to the Georgian psychiatric system.
David Schaefer, research director for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said the legislation has an opportunity to reduce the number of people with a mental health crisis entering the criminal justice system.
Schaefer also mentioned his own interactions with dealing with mental health issues. His brother committed suicide shortly after a phone conversation with him. Schaefer also said he remembers working in the immigrant community where someone contemplating suicide wanted to speak to a person who spoke the same language. This person did not end up committing suicide.
“And since I’ve been processing why you live and why you died for a couple of years, I think it comes down to that,” he said. “It’s important that someone hears you clearly and quickly connects you to the services you need.”
Several speakers stressed the need for language access and cultural training for those who would educate Georgians about patients’ rights and manage the grievance process for providers who violate the bill’s goal of “parity” – meaning physical and mental health are covered equally.
HB 1013 would allow community-based organizations to identify individuals who should be involuntarily committed to mental health care in a probate court. It would also remove the requirement that law enforcement officers witness a mentally ill person committing a crime before the officer could apprehend and involuntarily commit that person.
Devon Orland, a lobbyist at the Georgia Advocacy Office — a nonprofit that works with people with disabilities and the mentally ill — said that while she recognizes the goal of the legislation, she is concerned about a rise in compulsory enforcement.
“The true path to recovery and parity is through a robust community-based mental health system, choice, education and peer support, not through filling the hospitals and forcing treatments,” she said.
