{"id":616,"date":"2012-06-24T16:15:08","date_gmt":"2012-06-24T22:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/?p=616"},"modified":"2024-07-14T05:41:48","modified_gmt":"2024-07-14T10:41:48","slug":"the-florida-baker-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/24\/the-florida-baker-act\/","title":{"rendered":"The Florida Baker Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Florida Mental Health Act<\/a>, commonly known as the “Baker Act<\/a>,” is a Florida statute allowing for involuntary “examination” (otherwise known as involuntary commitment) of an individual. It can be initiated by a court, law enforcement officer, physician, clinical psychologist, psychiatric nurse, mental health counselor, marriage and family therapist, or clinical social worker.<\/p>\n

“Examinations” may last up to 72 hours (not counting weekends and holidays.)<\/p>\n

The act was named for a Florida state representative, Maxine Baker, who served as chair of a House Committee on mental health and was the sponsor of the bill.<\/p>\n

The nickname of the legislation has led to the term “Baker Act” as a verb, such as “he was Baker Acted” when an individual is forcibly committed. Use of “Baker Acting” as a verb has become prevalent as a slang term for involuntary commitment in other regions of the United States besides Florida.<\/p>\n

The number of\u00c2\u00a0Miami-Dade students taken for involuntary psychiatric examination by\u00c2\u00a0school police has almost exactly doubled in the last five years. Read more about this here<\/a>. At least 646 times this year, or more than 3 times per school day, Miami-Dade school police have handcuffed a student and taken him or her to a mental health facility under the Baker Act rules.<\/p>\n

There were no “school police” when I was in school. What has changed?<\/p>\n

Could it be related to the proliferation of addictive, violence-causing psychiatric drugs among school children? That might be too obvious to CCHR Supporters; but it is still a mystery to much of the society at large. Help us spread the word<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Click here for more information<\/a> about involuntary psychiatric commitment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Florida Mental Health Act, commonly known as the “Baker Act,” is a Florida statute allowing for involuntary “examination” (otherwise known as involuntary commitment) of an individual. It can be initiated by a court, law enforcement officer, physician, clinical psychologist, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[64,47],"class_list":["post-616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-muddy-river-newsletter","category-press-releases","tag-involuntary-commitment","tag-schools"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6NMpC-9W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cchrstl.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}