How to Initiate a 302 in Philadelphia: Who Qualifies and What to Expect

To initiate a 302 in Philadelphia, call the Philadelphia Crisis Line at 988 or 215-685-6440, available 24 hours a day.¹ Tell the operator you believe someone meets the criteria for a 302 involuntary psychiatric evaluation and describe, in specific terms, the recent behavior you have personally witnessed. A 302 is an emergency examination authorized under Pennsylvania’s Mental Health Procedures Act; it can hold a person for up to 120 hours (roughly five days) while a physician decides whether inpatient treatment is needed.² If the situation is actively life-threatening right now, call 911 instead.

Who Can Actually Start a 302

Pennsylvania law gives three routes into a 302, and which one applies depends on who you are.

A physician, a police officer, or a delegate authorized by the county mental health administrator who has personally observed the person’s behavior can take the individual directly to an approved facility without a warrant. A physician at a treatment facility can also certify the need for emergency examination on their own. Everyone else — family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers — has to go through the county mental health administrator by submitting a written application describing the facts, or work through the crisis line, which routes the case to a mobile crisis team or to police.³

In Philadelphia, the practical path for a lay petitioner is the crisis line. The line’s staff can dispatch a mobile crisis team that, once dispatched, contacts the individual within 15 minutes and typically arrives on scene within 45 minutes.⁴ The team is made up of mental health professionals whose first goal is de-escalation and connecting the person to voluntary help. An involuntary petition is treated as a last resort, and every 302 decision the mobile team makes goes through supervisory review.

What Behavior Legally Qualifies

The law requires two things at once: the person must be severely mentally disabled, and they must present a “clear and present danger” to themselves or others based on behavior in the last 30 days.² General worry, a bad feeling, or older incidents will not clear the bar. The conduct has to fit one of the specific categories below.

Danger to Self

A suicide attempt within the past 30 days, with a reasonable probability the person would try again without treatment. Suicide threats count only when the person has also taken steps to carry them out. Serious self-harm follows the same rule: the person must have inflicted or attempted significant self-injury with a reasonable likelihood of doing it again.³

A separate branch covers people who cannot meet their own basic needs for food, medical care, shelter, or personal safety, where without intervention death or serious physical harm would likely occur within 30 days.³ This is the category that reaches situations where a person has stopped eating, refuses critical medication, or is living in conditions that will cause serious physical harm.

Danger to Others

The person inflicted or attempted serious bodily harm on someone else within the past 30 days, and there is a reasonable probability of repetition. Threats of harm qualify if the person has also taken concrete steps toward carrying them out.³

What to Have Ready Before You Call

When you call the crisis line or fill out an application, you are making a case that the legal standard is met. Specifics move the process forward; vagueness stalls it. Have the following in front of you:

The person’s full name and where they are right now — at home, outdoors, at a specific address.
Exactly what they did or said, with dates and times. “She tried to cut her wrists with a kitchen knife on Tuesday evening” gives the operator something to work with. “She’s been acting strange” does not.
Any escalation you have seen: worsening behavior, stopping medication, refusing food, new threats.
Relevant history if you have it — prior hospitalizations, known diagnoses, current medications, and any treatment team. Helpful, not required.

Report only what you personally witnessed. The application form requires the petitioner to attest to having directly observed the behavior that meets the legal standard, not to have heard about it from someone else.³

The Call: Crisis Line or 911

For most situations, use the crisis line at 988 or 215-685-6440. Tell the operator you are requesting a 302 evaluation, walk through the specific behavior, and let them make the assessment about dispatching a mobile team. Philadelphia’s mobile crisis teams are dispatched only through the crisis line, not by direct request.⁴

Call 911 instead when the situation is immediate: a suicide attempt in progress, active violence, or any circumstance where waiting is unsafe. Tell the dispatcher it is a psychiatric emergency and ask for officers trained in crisis intervention. Police in Pennsylvania have independent authority to transport a person for a 302 evaluation based on their own observation, with no warrant required.²

If the person in crisis is under 18, call 988 and ask for the Children’s Mobile Crisis Team. Philadelphia has dedicated children’s crisis services, including the Philadelphia Children’s Crisis Response Center at 3300 Henry Avenue and the CHOP Behavioral Health and Crisis Center at 501 South 54th Street.⁵

What Happens After the Person Is Taken In

Once the individual arrives at a Crisis Response Center or other approved facility, a physician must examine them within two hours to decide whether they are severely mentally disabled and need immediate treatment.² If the physician finds the criteria met, treatment starts. If the physician concludes at any point during the hold that the criteria are not met, the person must be released.

The 120-hour window is the outer limit of a 302, not a set stay. Many evaluations end well before it. If, as the window closes, the person still meets the clear-and-present-danger standard, the facility can petition under Section 303 for extended involuntary treatment of up to 20 additional days, with a hearing and appointed counsel. Longer holds — Section 304 for up to 90 days, and Section 305 for further periods — require full hearings before a judge or mental health review officer, with progressively stronger procedural protections.²

Not every 302 leads to admission. The physician may find the person does not meet the involuntary standard and release them; the facility may offer voluntary admission if the person would benefit from treatment but does not clear the involuntary bar. From the moment the person arrives, staff must tell them why they are there, give them reasonable access to a telephone, and ask who they want notified of their location.²

Consequences Worth Knowing Before You Petition

Firearm Prohibition

A 302 can cost the person their right to own firearms. Under Pennsylvania law, a person involuntarily committed under Section 302 is prohibited from possessing firearms when the examining physician certified that inpatient care was necessary or that the person was committable. A 302 evaluation where the physician finds the criteria are not met does not trigger the ban.⁶ Judges, mental health review officers, and county administrators must report anyone involuntarily committed to the Pennsylvania State Police within seven days.²

Federal law is broader. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4), anyone who has been “committed to a mental institution” is prohibited from possessing firearms or ammunition, without the physician-certification carve-out Pennsylvania builds in.⁷

Who Pays

There is no clean answer to who pays for a 302 evaluation and any resulting inpatient stay. If the person has health insurance, the insurer is generally billed. If they are uninsured, the facility may bill them directly for care they did not consent to and may have actively refused, and some patients end up in collections. Public programs, charity care, and hospital financial assistance policies can reduce the burden, but coverage varies by facility. Inpatient psychiatric care can run over a thousand dollars per day, and ambulance transport adds its own costs, so even a short hold can leave real financial exposure. If you are initiating a 302 for a family member, ask the facility about billing and financial assistance early.

1
Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disAbility Services. Contact Us
2
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Mental Health Procedures Act
3
Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. MH 783 – Application for Involuntary Emergency Examination and Treatment
4
Community Behavioral Health. Mobile Crisis Response Services
5
Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual Disability Services. Assessment Centers and Crisis Response
6
Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Section 6105 – Persons Not to Possess, Use, Manufacture, Control, Sell or Transfer Firearms
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts