“Delegate Bell worked tirelessly as the Chair of the Subcommittee on Mental Health Reform - many times holding meetings late into the night and even into the early morning hours. He is the kind of legislator who works hard no matter what it takes and his stewardship on this important issue is appreciated by the Academy and the medical profession in Virginia as a whole."

-- Dr. Sterling Ransone, President of the Virginia Association of Family Physicians.

Reforming Mental Health Laws

 

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)