STAND. COM. REP. NO. 556

Honolulu, Hawaii

, 2005

RE: S.B. No. 1540

S.D. 1

 

 

Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-Third State Legislature

Regular Session of 2005

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committees on Health and Human Services, to which was referred S.B. No. 1540 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO MENTAL HEALTH,"

beg leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to permit parents or guardians to admit individuals under the age of eighteen to nonemergency psychiatric treatment facilities without the consent or countersignature of the individual.

The Department of Health and the Hawaii Psychiatric Medical Association submitted testimony in support of this measure. The Public Defender submitted comments.

Your Committees find that the current law enables the Judiciary to force a child into treatment after a series of entanglements with the law or after a determination of "dangerousness." As the Hawaii Psychiatric Medical Association testified, very few children refer themselves for mental health treatment. Parents are placed in the difficult situation of watching their child deteriorate, begin to fail at school, and become increasingly unable to help themselves maintain socially-acceptable standards of behavior. As the proponent pointed out, often a youth with a mental health disorder will use drugs or alcohol to "self-medicate." This measure gives parents or guardians an opportunity to intervene before the child moves past important early treatment opportunities or makes a series of legal mistakes.

Your Committees have amended this measure by changing the definition of "neutral factfinder" to mean a mental health clinician instead of a natural person who need not be law-trained or a judicial or administrative officer, and by making technical nonsubstantive amendments for clarity and style.

As affirmed by the records of votes of the members of your Committees on Health and Human Services that are attached to this report, your Committees are in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1540, as amended herein, and recommend that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1540, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committees on Health and Human Services,

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SUZANNE CHUN OAKLAND, Chair

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ROSALYN H. BAKER, Chair