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Mental Health Intervention in California
Mental health intervention in California, for the days a 5150 cannot reach.
California gives families more legal doors than most states: the 5150, Laura’s Law, CARE Court, and since SB 43 a wider meaning of grave disability. Here is what each one does, which ones you can open yourself, and where a prepared, voluntary conversation belongs.
California families usually learn the number before they learn the law. “Can we 5150 him?” is often the first question a frightened parent asks, whether they live in Los Angeles, the Bay Area or the Central Valley. A 5150 is an evaluation of up to 72 hours. It is not a treatment plan, and it often ends with your loved one back on the sidewalk outside the hospital.
The legal tools here are real, and a few of them belong to the family. Our work sits alongside them: preparing the people closest to your loved one, confirming the right psychiatric placement, and guiding a voluntary conversation with nobody but your family paying us.
Danger right now comes first
A weapon, an overdose, a suicide attempt or violence: call 911. For a mental health crisis that has not reached that point, call or text 988, any hour, free. Under California law, designated members of a county mobile crisis team are among the people who can start a 5150, so ask the 988 counselor whether your county team can come out. Plan the rest once everyone is safe.
Welfare and Institutions Code, section 5150
What a 5150 actually authorizes
The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act is California’s civil commitment law, and section 5150 is its front door. Under WIC 5150, when a person, because of a mental health disorder, is a danger to others, a danger to themselves, or gravely disabled, a short list of people may take them into custody on probable cause: a peace officer, the professional person in charge of a county-designated facility, attending staff of that facility, designated members of a mobile crisis team, or a professional person the county has designated.
The hold lasts up to 72 hours for assessment, evaluation and crisis intervention, or placement in a facility the county has designated for evaluation and treatment. The clock starts when your loved one is first detained, not when they reach a bed. Notice who is missing from that list: parents, spouses and adult children. You cannot sign a 5150.
You can still shape one. A companion section, WIC 5150.05, requires whoever is deciding to consider relevant information about the historical course of the person’s mental disorder, and it names evidence from family members as part of that history. A written timeline (prior hospitalizations, medications that worked and were stopped, what the last relapse looked like) is the most useful thing you can hand an officer or a crisis clinician.
After 72 hours: a 5250, or the door
Before the 72 hours run out, the facility decides. If its professional staff find your loved one is still a danger to self or others, or gravely disabled, and a county-designated intensive treatment facility agrees to admit, the person may be certified for up to 14 days of intensive treatment under WIC 5250. That certification comes from clinicians, not from the family.
Grave disability also matters beyond the first two weeks, because the same definition governs LPS conservatorship, the longer court process in Chapter 3 of the Act. Conservatorship is a serious step with its own hearings and lawyers; we are not attorneys, and if your family is heading there we will tell you to speak with one who practices LPS law in your county.
Most often, though, the facility releases. Your loved one walks out with a prescription and an appointment, and the family is left holding the next move. Our guide to involuntary psychiatric pathways compares how other states handle this same handoff.
SB 43: when severe substance use became part of grave disability
Senate Bill 43 rewrote the definition California families argue about most. In the current text of WIC 5008(h), “gravely disabled” means a person who, as a result of a mental health disorder, a severe substance use disorder, or both together, cannot provide for basic personal needs for food, clothing, shelter, personal safety or necessary medical care. Personal safety and medical care were not part of the old test.
The same section let each county defer the SB 43 changes by board resolution until January 1, 2026, and many did. That window has now closed, so the expanded definition applies statewide. Practice still varies from county to county, mostly because of how many locked beds and staff each one has.
For families, the change is narrower than the headlines suggested. It widens who may be held; it does not create a substance use treatment program at the end of the hold. If your loved one is drinking or using on top of a psychiatric illness, the question after any hold is the same one we work on every week: which program can treat both conditions at real clinical depth. Our guide to co-occurring disorders when mental illness came first explains why that order matters.
Three court-backed routes
Where California lets a family start something.
Laura’s Law (AOT)
Under WIC 5346, a parent, spouse, sibling or adult child, or an adult who lives with your loved one, may ask the county behavioral health department to file. The county director files; the court may order assisted outpatient treatment for an initial period of up to six months.
CARE Court
Here the family files directly. WIC 5974 lets a spouse, parent, sibling, child, grandparent or housemate petition. Eligibility under WIC 5972 is limited to adults with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder or bipolar I with psychotic features.
Your county’s crisis system
Mobile crisis teams and county-designated facilities can begin a 5150 when danger is present. Calling 988 or 911 and handing over your written history is the family’s part.
The 5250 certification
Fourteen days of intensive treatment is decided by facility staff. Your influence runs through the treatment team, which is why a calm working relationship with them matters.
CARE is built around a one-year timeline, with a status hearing in the eleventh month under WIC 5977.3. The Judicial Council’s CARE Act self-help guide walks through the forms, and it is candid that CARE should be used only when no less limiting option would meet the person’s needs.
Every one of those doors moves on a court’s calendar or a county’s capacity. A voluntary intervention moves on yours. That is the practical reason families in California often run both tracks at once.
Before a petition. A CARE or Laura’s Law filing takes weeks to reach a hearing. A planned family conversation, with a psychiatric program already holding a bed, can happen in days, and if your loved one says yes, the petition may never be needed.
Alongside a petition. Some families file and prepare at the same time, so a refusal in the living room is not the end of the road.
After a release. The 72 hours end, the hospital discharges, and for a short window your loved one is frightened and unusually open. We plan for that window on purpose, because it closes quickly.
How a planned intervention fits around the law
Discharge, and the first week home
A familiar version of this moment goes like this: the 5150 ended Sunday morning, your daughter is home, she has not filled the prescription, and she is already saying the hospital was the problem. Nothing is wrong with your instincts. The illness has gone quiet for a few days, and quiet is not the same as better.
With the right signed releases, Hannah gathers what the hospital learned: the working diagnosis, any medication started, the follow-up it recommended. Matt and the family use that information to build a calm, specific conversation about the next level of care, whether that is residential psychiatric treatment, a partial hospitalization program or intensive outpatient work closer to home. Our guide to psychiatric levels of care explains each option, and our guide to high-acuity presentations helps families see the pattern when one hospitalization becomes three.
Checking a California program before you agree to it
Hospitals and licensed health facilities. The California Department of Public Health regulates more than 10,000 health care facilities, and its Cal Health Find database lets you look up a facility’s license and certification and file a complaint.
Substance use programs. The Department of Health Care Services keeps directories of licensed and certified substance use disorder facilities, along with county access lines for people seeking treatment.
What a license does not tell you. A license confirms legal status. It does not tell you whether a psychiatrist is actually on site, how the program handles someone who still denies being ill, or what discharge looks like. Those are the questions we ask clinical leadership directly through our treatment navigation, with no referral fee shaping the answer.
G3 is based in Austin, Texas. Preparation starts by phone and video the day you call, and Matt flies in for the intervention, usually into Los Angeles (LAX), San Francisco (SFO), San Diego (SAN), Sacramento (SMF) or Fresno (FAT). The right program might be across the county or in another state, and someone in a psychiatric crisis should not make that trip alone, so our sober transport companions stay until intake is complete. If relatives are scattered across several states, our guide to interstate intervention logistics shows how we coordinate it. For substance use intervention across the state, see our California interventionist page.
The fee is flat and set in writing before you commit. Travel is billed at actual cost, and transport is quoted on its own line.
Reaching your loved one, wherever they are in the state
Common questions
California families ask us about holds and courts.
Can a parent put an adult child on a 5150 in California?
How long is a 5150, and what is a 5250?
Does SB 43 mean addiction alone can lead to a hold?
What is the difference between Laura’s Law and CARE Court?
Our son was released after 72 hours. What should we do this week?
How do we check a California facility’s license?
Keep reading
California and West Coast pages for the next step
The next step is a conversation
You do not have to figure this out alone.
One confidential call with G3 begins it. No pressure, no judgment, just a path forward.