Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 24-1103 into law on April 4, making Colorado the second state in the country to ban the official use of the term “excited delirium.” The ban comes a few years after the American Medical Association formally opposed “excited delirium” as a medical diagnosis.
Notably, two of the paramedics involved in the case of Elijah McClain told investigators he had “excited delirium” during the incident that led to the loss of his life. McClain’s case was not in isolation.
The AMA in the same report it opposed the use of the term said the new policy related to the term “addresses reports that show a pattern of using the term ‘excited delirium’ and pharmacological interventions such as ketamine as justification for excessive police force, disproportionately cited in cases where Black men die in law enforcement custody.”
Specifically, the bill prohibits the use of the term in training programs for police officers or first responders, in incident reports completed by police officers and as a cause of death on a certificate of death. The bill defined “excited delirium” as a “term used to describe a person’s state of agitation, excitability, paranoia, extreme aggression, physical violence, and apparent immunity to pain that is not listed in the most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
The bill signed by Polis contained two amendments to the original bill text. The first amendment ensured a specific protection for emergency medical courses that teach medical interactions with individuals in an altered mental state. The second amendment allows for the teaching of the history of the term “excited delirium” in emergency medical service training programs but prohibits teaching of the term for use by emergency medical service providers.
The bill’s prime sponsors were all Democrats, with two in each chamber of the Colorado Legislature. Reps. Judy Amabile and Leslie Herod, the prime House sponsors, spoke about the bill in its initial House Judiciary Committee hearing.
Amabile told the committee law enforcement training in Colorado included training on “excited delirium” until recently.
“The genesis of the bill is to make sure that we’re not training law enforcement or emergency responders to make a diagnosis in the field of something that isn’t even a real thing that may cause them to respond in a way that is the wrong way to respond and cause harm to the person that is happening to,” said Amabile.
Herod referenced previous testimony to the legislature about the harm the term “excited delirium” caused to members of the Colorado community.
“Historically, [excited delirium] has been used to erase the accountability of deaths occurring at the hands of law enforcement and EMTs,” said Herod. “All too often the term has led to overly aggressive tactics, maltreatment and death. The term is undeniably racially charged and has led to the killing of Black and brown people, including Elijah McClain.”
Individuals from the medical field testified to their opposition of the teaching of the term being prohibited in classroom settings in the initial bill text. The first amendment, passed in the initial committee hearing, was a nod to these concerns.
Representatives from the Colorado Department of Law and the Attorney General, Inseparable, the National Police Accountability Project and Mental Health Colorado appeared before the committee to testify in support of the bill.