Families of mentally ill adults have no access to information about their loved ones under the so called "protection" of the current HIPAA Laws. When a mentally ill adult gets picked up by law enforcement officers, even if the family member called 911 or the law enforcement, they are not allowed to even tell the family member where they are taking your mentally ill family member -- to what hospital, to jail, to an institution, etc. -- you can't get ANY INFORMATION -- and therefore you cannot really help. The doctors can't give you a diagnosis, the police can't tell you where your adult child or husband or wife is or if they have been released! If these people had a disease like cancer or a heart attack, and we called 911, we would be able to find out if they are still in the hospital, we would be able to ask the doctor what the treatment options are, etc. Why can we not do this for the mentally ill? It's totally unfair and causes many families to eventually abandon their mentally ill family members since they can't help and can't even keep track of where they are. This results in many of these people living on the street! By simply changing the HIPAA Law to allow family members access to information about our seriously mentally ill family members, our streets would have many, many less homeless people. Many of the people who are suffering with serious mental illnesses like schizophrenia, bipolar, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other serious mental disorders would be able to be helped by family members who could advocate for these people who need their help! 1% of the population has a serious mental illness. They would be able to get help from their families if this law gets changed.