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Backgrounders

Voluntary and involuntary care in B.C.
Updated March 12, 2025

When people are in crisis, they must be met with compassion and care. That’s why the Province has made significant investments to build a comprehensive system of mental-health and substance-use care, including for child and youth mental health, harm reduction, acute and community treatment, and recovery services.

Voluntary care

  • Foundry Centres and Integrated Child and Youth Mental Health Teams that address mental-health and substance-use issues early to prevent more complex challenges in adulthood;
  • bed-based treatment and recovery beds so that people seeking treatment can access these services when they are ready to take that step in their healing journey;
  • the Red Fish Healing Centre, a 105-bed site that provides specialized care to support people who live with the most severe, complex substance-use and mental-health issues;
  • Road to Recovery, a made-in-B.C. model of addictions care that establishes a seamless continuum of care through a full continuum of substance-use services from assessment to withdrawal management (detox), treatment and aftercare services for clients with moderate to severe substance-use disorders;
  • First Nations treatment centres to support a range of Indigenous-led mental-health and substance-use services that are culturally appropriate;
  • recovery community centres, which provide low-barrier, community-based recovery supports that help people maintain their recovery;
  • peer-assisted care teams, which pair mental-health professionals with peer workers to respond to crisis calls and connect people to mental-health and substance-use supports, are available in New Westminster, Victoria, the North Shore of Vancouver, Prince George and the Comox Valley;
  • assertive community treatment teams, which are multidisciplinary teams that operate 24/7 and provide services to people who have a history of severe mental illness and/or substance use, many of whom have had difficulty maintaining access to traditional community mental-health and substance-use services; and
  • mobile integrated crisis response programs, which pair a police officer with a mental-health professional to respond to mental-health-related crisis call.

Involuntary care

The Mental Health Act currently states that a patient can only be involuntarily admitted if all of the following four criteria are met:

  • the person suffers from a mental disorder that seriously impairs their ability to react appropriately to their environment, or to associate with others;
  • the person requires psychiatric treatment in or through a designated facility;
  • the person requires care, supervision and control in or through a designated facility to prevent their substantial mental or physical deterioration, or for their own protection or the protection of others; and
  • the person is not suitable as a voluntary patient.

Physicians and nurse practitioners apply their clinical assessment to determine the appropriateness of involuntary admission. The vast majority of people with mental-health conditions access care voluntarily and are effectively treated on an outpatient basis. The Mental Health Act ensures access to care in situations where the person is unable to seek care for themselves due to a state of severe mental impairment.

Mental Health Act admissions occur at 75 designated facilities, including:

  • 37 hospitals, which are designated as psychiatric units;
  • 13 hospitals as observation units (which allow shorter-term admissions); and
  • 25 provincial mental-health facilities (inpatient).

The total number of beds, which can be used for voluntary or involuntary admissions, within these facilities is 2,000.

In addition, the involuntary care beds at the Alouette Homes in Maple Ridge and the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre will open in spring 2025.