Who must post the California Mental Health Patients’ Rights Poster?
- Persons who are receiving treatment in mental health facilities, including those persons subject to involuntary commitment, have the same legal rights and responsibilities that are guaranteed all other persons by the Federal Constitution and the California Constitution and state laws. (Welf. & Inst. Code § 5325.1)
- The law requires any health facility, as defined in Health and Safety Code section 1250, providing psychiatric evaluation or treatment to persons detained or admitted for the purpose of receiving such services, to post a list of these rights in places accessible to patients.
- These rights are enumerated in Welfare and Institutions Code Sections 5325 and 5325.1.
What rights are specified on the California Mental Health Patients’ Rights Poster?
The poster informs persons receiving mental health services that they have the right to:
- To dignity, privacy, and humane care
- To be free from abuse or neglect
- To prompt medical care and treatment
- To religious freedom and practice
- To participate in appropriate programs of publicly supported education
- To social interaction and participation in community activities
- To be free from hazardous procedures
- To receive information and participate in treatment planning
- To consent or refuse to consent to treatment, unless in an emergency or incapacity requires otherwise
- To client-centered services designed to meet individual goals and needs
- To treatment services that promote the patient’s ability to be more independent
In addition, persons receiving in-patient psychiatric evaluation or treatment in a health facility that provides such services, have the right to:
- To wear their own clothes
- To keep and use their own personal possessions;
- To keep and be allowed to spend a reasonable sum of their own money
- To have access to individual storage space for their private use
- To see visitors each day
- To have reasonable access to telephones to make and receive confidential calls
- To have access to letter-writing materials and stamps, and to mail and receive unopened correspondence
- To see and receive the services of a patient advocate
Information and Reporting
The California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) ensures that mental health laws, regulations, and policies for the rights of mental health service recipients are observed in licensed mental health facilities.
The poster provides contact information for the California Office of Patients’ Rights, the Department of Health Care Services, and space for the facility’s local county patients’ rights advocate. Patients can use the contact information to obtain more information about their rights or to report possible violations.