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Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code § 5500

General Provisions

Known as the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act

The act spans §§ 5000 to 5550 (263 sections).

Applied in 30 court decisions — leading case 66 Cal. 2d 390 - People v. Merriam (1967)

Most recently applied in 20 Cal. App. 3d 742 - People v. Lindsey (October 1971)

Amended by Stats. 2014, Ch. 144, Sec. 97

How often courts cite this section

194619501960197140
citing decisions per year

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.

As used in this chapter:

(a) “Advocacy” means those activities undertaken on behalf of persons who are receiving or have received mental health services to protect their rights or to secure or upgrade treatment or other services to which they are entitled.

(b) “Mental health client” or “client” means a person who is receiving or has received services from a mental health facility, service, or program and who has personally or through a guardian ad litem, entered into an agreement with a county patients’ rights advocate for the provision of advocacy services.

(c) “Mental health facilities, services, or programs” means a publicly operated or supported mental health facility or program; a private facility or program licensed or operated for health purposes providing services to persons with mental health disorders; and publicly supported agencies providing other than mental health services to clients with mental health disorders.

(d) “Independent of providers of service” means that the advocate has no direct or indirect clinical or administrative responsibility for any recipient of mental health services in any mental health facility, program, or service for which he or she performs advocacy activities.

(e) “County patients’ rights advocate” means an advocate appointed, or whose services are contracted for, by a local mental health director.

Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.