Mental health providers and advocates from across the state lauded a proposal from House Speaker David Ralston to increase access to mental health services and improve the way the issue is addressed in the state, but some warned of unintended consequences.
Ralston, a Blue Ridge Republican, has said it is his priority this year to pass legislation that ensures mental health is treated the same as physical health.
House Bill 1013 aims to expand Georgians’ access to care, increase the number of mental health professionals in the state, require insurance companies to cover mental health the same way they cover physical health, give first responders help when they’re called into a mental health crisis, and improve data and transparency in the sector.
“My family and I have experienced this personally,” state Rep. Todd Jones, a Cumming Republican who is co-sponsoring the legislation with Ralston, said at a hearing Wednesday. “The oldest of my children has a diagnosed severe mental illness and dealt with substance abuse for the last six or seven years. But passion isn’t what’s going to make us go from 50 to No. 1, its going to be a lot of hard work.”
Georgia ranks low nationally on most measurements of mental health treatment while it ranks high in the percentage of residents who face challenges, according to a 2021 report by Mental Health America, a century-old nonprofit advocacy group. It put Georgia dead last for the number of mental health professionals per capita. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry says Georgia has only eight psychiatrists per 100,000 children; the academy suggests a better ratio is 47 per 100,000.
During the House Health and Human Services Committee hearing, Jones stressed that the legislation was a starting point for discussion.
“We want and we welcome constructive criticism, and we also welcome solutions to issues you think we may have missed,” Jones said.
The 74-page measure is the result of recommendations from the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission, which developed more than 50 suggestions to change Georgia’s laws. Ralston’s office estimates that if the bill becomes law, it will cost about $29.7 million a year.
Almost every speaker during Wednesday’s three-hour hearing had a personal connection to Georgia’s mental health system.
David Schaefer, research director with the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said the legislation has the ability to reduce the number of people in a mental health crisis going into 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 considering suicide was looking to speak to a person who spoke the same language. That person wound up not committing suicide.
“And as I’ve processed for a few years now why one lives and why one died, I think it comes down to this,” he said. “It comes down to somebody hearing you clearly and connecting you quickly with the services that are needed.”
Several speakers stressed a need for language access and cultural training for those who would be educating Georgians about patients’ rights and manage the complaint process for providers who are violating the bill’s goal of “parity” — meaning covering physical and mental health in the same way.
HB 1013 would allow community-based organizations to identify to a probate court people who should be involuntarily committed for mental health care. It also would remove the requirement that law enforcement officers must witness a person in mental health distress commit a felony before the officer could detain and involuntarily commit that person.
Devon Orland, a legal and advocacy director with the Georgia Advocacy Office — a nonprofit organization that works with those who are disabled and mentally ill — said while she appreciated the goal of the legislation, she worried about an uptick in the use of involuntary commitments.
“The true way to recovery and parity is through a robust community-based mental health system, choice, education and peer support, and not filling the hospitals and forcing treatment,” she said.
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