Mental Health Reform

In response to the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, Rob was chosen to lead a special Virginia House of Delegates subcommittee charged with reforming Virginia’s mental health commitment laws. The subcommittee’s goals were to ensure that a similar tragedy would not happen again and to protect the ability of Virginians to voluntarily seek care for themselves. In 2008, as a result of the subcommittee’s work, Virginia saw the most sweeping reforms of mental health commitment laws in 30 years.

These new laws do the following:

• Require local community service boards to attend commitment hearings (HB 499 – 2008)

• Specify which agency from the community service board will follow the case if a commitment is authorized and report back to the court if the mentally ill person disobeys the court’s treatment orders (HB 499 – 2008)

• Revise commitment standard, replacing “imminent danger” with “substantial likelihood of serious bodily harm” (HB 559 – 2008)

• Allow records to be more easily shared among the agencies delivering services, including law enforcement (HB 576 – 2008)

• Require public universities to notify parents of students who are a danger to themselves or others (HB 1005 – 2008)