Article
Incentives Offered for Mental Health Reporting
Posted May 2, 2007, 07:07 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A proposed bill offers financial incentives to states that speed transmission of mental health data to a federal database.
Many states would have to amend privacy laws to comply, the New York Times reports. Now only 22 states submit mental health records to the system used for gun background checks.
Last year, the database contained only about 235,000 mental health records even though an estimated 2.7 million people have been involuntarily committed in the U.S. Moves to speed up the data transfer come in the wake of the country's worst mass shooting last month at Virginia Tech.