There is no privilege under this article if the psychotherapist has reasonable cause to believe that the patient is in such mental or emotional condition as to be dangerous to himself or to the person or property of another and that disclosure of the communication is necessary to prevent the threatened danger.
Cal. Evid. Code § 1024
Psychotherapist-Patient Privilege
Applied in 23 court decisions — leading case 27 Cal. 3d 741 - Thompson v. County of Alameda (1980)
Most recently applied in Mathews v. Becerra (December 2019)
Enacted by Stats. 1965, Ch. 299.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.