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On Jan. 1, a new law went into effect in Oregon that was supposed to make it easier for authorities to force someone with acute mental illness into treatment against their will.
It remains to be seen whether this is actually having any effect; lawmakers are set in a few months to hear an analysis of the impacts.
But either way, state Sen. Lisa Reynolds (D-West Portland) thinks the state ought to lower the bar on civil commitments even more.
“The pendulum, for sure, has swung way too far to patient rights,” she said, adding that, “if someone is in the fentanyl fold out on the streets, they are not living their best life.”
Reynolds, chair of the Senate Committee on Early Childhood and Behavioral Health, made these remarks during a endorsement interview with WW late last week in response to a question about how Oregon should fundamentally rethink how it tackles severe mental illness and drug addiction.
A pediatrician who has spoken about her brother’s struggles with schizophrenia, Reynolds said in the world she envisions, it would be far easier for authorities to compel certain people wary of treatment into a short inpatient stay at a hospital.
“We need to be having opportunities—and maybe forced opportunities—for some of these folks," she said.
The idea to lower the bar for civil commitment has historically raised hackles among libertarian-minded Oregonians. But as conditions worsened on the streets of Portland in recent years, the concept drew an array of supporters, from former Mayor Ted Wheeler to Oregon first lady Aimee Kotek Wilson.
Proponents of the idea got a win in 2025 with House Bill 2005. The law sought to give authorities more clarity regarding the conditions under which someone could be, among other things, deemed a danger to themselves or others and compelled into treatment.
Any effort to go further is likely to face significant resistance. Advocacy group Disability Rights Oregon opposed HB 2005 on various grounds, arguing, for example, that it would force many people needlessly into treatment, where they would take up scarce beds better filled by more acute cases.
“More and more patients are left in private hospitals, sometimes spending long times housed inside emergency departments and other inappropriate settings,” DRO wrote in testimony against the bill last summer. The proposal, it added, would just put “more patients in the queue for limited and already overwhelmed resources.”
Asked about bed capacity concerns, Reynolds said everyone knows Oregon State Hospital is full with people on aid-and-assist orders—that is, charged with crimes but deemed unfit to stand trial.
But she said psychiatric wards like Unity Center for Behavioral Health in the Lloyd District could take in patients if the state continues to build more step-down facilities—residential treatment with “wraparound services” to which a hospital might discharge patients.
“They are growing,” Reynolds says of the treatment centers, “probably not as quickly as we need.”
Watch the conversation in the video below.
