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N.Y. MHY Law § 9.21

This is the official text of N.Y. MHY Law § 9.21, part of New York’s MHY Law — part of the compiled statutory law of New York, published by the state as "MHY Law." Browse the sections below, each linked to its official government source.

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Voluntary and informal admissions; encouragement of

Official statutory text

§ 9.21 Voluntary and informal admissions; encouragement of.\n (a) It shall be the duty of all state and local officers having duties\nto perform relating to the mentally ill to encourage any person suitable\ntherefor and in need of care and treatment for mental illness to apply\nfor admission as a voluntary or informal patient.\n (b) No requirement shall be made by rule, regulation, or otherwise as\na condition to admission or retention that any person applying for\nadmission shall have the legal capacity to contract.\n (c) A person requesting admission to a hospital, who is suitable for\nadmission on a voluntary or informal status, shall be admitted only on\nsuch a voluntary or informal status. The hospital shall, in such case,\nhave the discretion to admit the person on either such status, except\nthat, if the person specifically requests admission on an informal\nstatus and is suitable therefor, he shall be admitted only on such\ninformal status.\n

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.