Oregon considers changing the way mentally ill people are committed

this is an interesting problem that oregon has. far from what you might think with committal, oregon's laws on committing people are such a tall order currently that it's bordering on impossible for someone to get committed without also committing a criminal act, which is less than optimal:

Civil commitments have been appealed so many times that the legal standard has gradually become harder and harder to meet. For example, one threat of suicide is no longer enough to prove a danger, according to the courts. And any perceived danger has to be “highly probable,” not just likely.
“We’ve reached a point where the bar is so high, that really the only way to enter the Oregon State Hospital, for example, is to be arrested. And we find that to be unacceptable,” Bouneff said.
He said Senate Bill 763 aims to decriminalize mental illness and is a minimal fix. The bill would define “dangerous to self or others” as “likely” to inflict serious harm within the next 30 days.
The bill also dictates that one threat of suicide can now be considered by a judge.

however as you can see there, this particular bill (which might not even make it to the senate floor, realistically) might swing it too far back in the opposite direction, bringing the standard back down to a level that will see many more people committed, possibly too many for the system to handle without significant expansion. also, there are more than a few people who think that commitment just straight up isn't that helpful and that the state needs to focus more on preventing people from being in crisis to begin with than trying to manage crisis as it happens.