NAMI California Town Hall Meeting on the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act, featuring guest speaker Randall Hagar.

The goal was to provide education and background on LPS, with a basic overview on the California law governing the involuntary civil commitment of individuals who — due to mental illness — pose a danger to themselves or others, or who are gravely disabled and require inpatient psychiatric care.

 

Our speakers:

 

Randall Hagar is currently the Policy Consultant and Legislative Advocate for the Psychiatric Physicians Alliance of California. Formerly 1st Vice President and Chair of the California Alliance for Mental Illness’ Legislative Committee, he helped to write both the California Mental Health Insurance Parity and Assisted Outpatient Treatment (Laura’s Law) statutes and was the program director for family education.

 

Shannon Suo graduated from UC Davis Family Medicine and Psychiatry residency program and holds dual-board certification in both specialties. She served as Medical Director of Northgate Point Regional Support Team (a Sacramento County-contracted community mental health clinic providing services to people with significant chronic mental illness/”target population” diagnoses) for seven years before moving to UC Davis, where she worked at the Sacramento County Health Center providing medical and psychiatric care. In 2017, she started Sacramento County’s Mental Health Urgent Care Clinic, providing urgent mental health services with an interdisciplinary team of peer support specialists, clinicians, nurses, and psychiatric staff to avert the need for hospitalization and emergency room visits. Suo is also a faculty member at UCD, teaching medical students and residents in psychiatry, family medicine, internal medicine (as well as the combined programs for IM Psych and FM Psych), primary care providers, and is currently treasurer of the Psychiatric Physicians Alliance of California.

“There are many barriers to finding the right care at the right time appropriate for persons in crisis because of a mental illness. One of them is the 50-year-old set of treatment laws called the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act [LPS Act], which badly needs updating,” said Hagar, who helped write the Laura’s Law statute, and other changes to the LPS.