Florida Governor Signs Mental Health and Diversion Legislation
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed two bills on June 25 aimed at improving mental health care and addiction treatment. Senate Bill 1620 implements recommendations from the Commission on Mental Health and Substance Abuse, requiring facilities to update treatment plans for patients every 30 days, or every two months for patients who have been in facilities for more than two years. The bill was passed unanimously through the legislative process and also requires the Department of Children and Families to conduct reviews of mental health services and accessibility at schools and health care facilities.
The second bill, Senate Bill 168, is named the Tristin Murphy Act, after a 37-year-old man who killed himself with a chainsaw in 2021 while on a prison work detail. Murphy, who suffered from schizophrenia and had been placed in general prison population despite his history of mental illness and prior stay in a state mental health facility, drove into a retention pond and received a prison sentence. The bill establishes a process for local governments to divert inmates with mental health issues from jail to treatment programs and requires the Department of Corrections to review each inmate’s physical and mental health before they become eligible for work details.
State Senator Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, championed the measures and a research center to be housed within the Florida Mental Health Institute at the University of South Florida will be named after him. Rouson, who was once addicted to drugs but “cleaned up” and has championed substance abuse issues since his election to the Legislature in 2008, emphasized the importance of the bill in “increasing the accessibility of long-acting medications” and “reducing the risk of relapse.” He stated: “I will never forget the day I asked for help. The hopelessness, the loneliness, the anger, the fear, the deep-gut rage, the gift of desperation—the bottom was my gift of desperation. I became desperate to change.”
This article is an AI-assisted summary. All facts and figures are drawn from the original report: https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/local/state/2025/06/25/desantis-mental-health-bills/84352995007/