{"id":268268,"date":"2025-10-01T04:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T04:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/268268\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T04:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T04:27:12","slug":"a-turning-point-for-florida-tristin-murphy-act-aims-to-get-people-into-mental-health-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/268268\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A turning point for Florida:\u2019 Tristin Murphy Act aims to get people into mental health treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORLANDO, Fla.<\/strong> \u2013 A slew of new state laws will take effect on Wedneday, Oct. 1, including a measure aimed at enhancing mental health support in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis marks a turning point for Florida with this act,\u201d said Dr. Marni Stahlman, the president and CEO of the Mental Health Association of Central Florida. \u201cInstead of automatically jailing people with mental illnesses for minor, non-violent offenses, it gets them screened and into treatment. That\u2019s the purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

News 6 spoke to Stahlman a day before the implementation of Senate Bill 168<\/a>, intended to divert people experiencing mental health problems from the criminal justice system to receive appropriate treatment instead. <\/p>\n

[WATCH: <\/b>Here are all the new Florida laws taking effect on Oct. 1, 2025<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n

Dubbed the Tristan Murphy Act<\/a>, the law is named after a 37-year-old man who killed himself while incarcerated at a state prison work program. Murphy had a history of schizophrenia and had been imprisoned on a littering charge. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis law is now stipulating that [inmates] must be evaluated,\u201d Stahlman said. \u201cAnd if there is a severity in the illness, then they have to go into a treatment facility.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among other things, the law will permit counties and municipalities to establish misdemeanor mental health diversion programs and pretrial felony diversion programs. <\/p>\n

It will also require mental health evaluations for inmates with a history of incompetency before they are placed on probation and released back into society.<\/p>\n

[WATCH: Normalizing conversations about abuse, mental health, addiction]<\/b><\/p>\n

Stahlman cautioned that while the goal of the law is admirable, the law itself will not fix things overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about saving lives, cutting repeated arrests, and making our justice system smarter and safer,\u201d Stahlman said. \u201cBut there\u2019s a lot more that goes into it, and there\u2019s a lot more work to be done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stahlman pointed to a deficit of beds and a substantial number of people grappling with mental health illnesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cDiverting more individuals into the system–while it looks good on the front end\u2014is going to create a backlog and possibly these individuals will still not receive the adequate care that they need because of wait times,\u201d said Stahlman.<\/p>\n

Breaking News Alerts<\/p>\n

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Copyright 2025 by WKMG ClickOrlando – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 A slew of new state laws will take effect on Wedneday, Oct. 1, including a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":268269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[723,31931,454,210,517,80,139716,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-268268","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-florida","9":"tag-florida-legislature","10":"tag-government","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-mental-health","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-tristan-murphy","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115297022641324318","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}