In early 2026, CSAP updated its legislative priorities to strengthen California’s mental health system and improve access to high-quality, evidence-based care. You can view the full document here.

1. Expand and ensure access to evidence-based psychiatric treatment across the continuum of care. Legislative actions should A) strengthen the mental health workforce, B) strengthen enforcement of insurance coverage requirements for psychiatric services through effective oversight and accountability mechanisms to ensure fair insurer conduct, C) expand access to child and adolescent mental health services, and D) modernize regulations and funding to enable telehealth and digital technologies that improve care access, care quality, privacy, and patient safety. Such initiatives can ensure that Californians have timely access to evidence based treatments that can prevent SMI, increase long term recovery, and reduce disability.

2. Prioritize and Modernize Care for Californians With Severe Mental Illness and Severe Substance Use Disorders. CSAP urges legislative action to prioritize individuals with treatment-refractory SMI and SSUD through fundamental reforms to behavioral health funding and law. This includes expanding robust emergency psychiatric response, ensuring adequate high-acuity inpatient capacity, developing high-quality long-term supported living options, and repealing the IMD exclusion. CSAP also supports modernizing the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act to reflect best practices, reduce unnecessary detention, facilitate timely medical and psychiatric treatment when consent cannot be obtained, reduce stigma, and expand use of technology to ensure meaningful court access for individuals with SMI, including those who are justice-involved.

3. Establish comprehensive statewide quality monitoring for county mental health systems: We advocate legislative initiatives that establish more uniform, comprehensive, and measurable statewide quality monitoring for county mental health systems. Such monitoring should be paired with significant financial rewards for those counties that increase access to evidence-based services and improve measures of health for patients with SMI. Quality metrics must include number of individuals incarcerated with severe mental illness, competency proceedings, and individuals awaiting state hospital placement. Counties that do not submit data reporting must be penalized.