friends) can now become involved. Upon request, pending court approval, family and/or friends (unlike the temporary LPS conservatorship) can be appointed general / permanent LPS conservator for the conservatee. The 1-year duration for a general / permanent LPS conservatorship was again codified into the LPS Act to combat past abuses. This ensures that no individual is indefinitely detained in locked psychiatric care and that every year justification to continue the LPS conservatorship is brought before the court. This is another difference between LPS conservatorship and probate or limited conservatorship - both of which have no explicit expiration date. Indeed, if the LPS conservator does not submit a request to the court to renew the LPS conservatorship, by default it expires. Renewal of the LPS conservatorship requires that two mental health professionals formally declare that the LPS conservatorship still remains appropriate. During a general / permanent LPS conservatorship, the conservatee is most likely held in long-term, locked psychiatric care. Although California state hospitals still exist and are in use, most LPS conservatees are placed at local (county level) psychiatric hospitals. Nothing in the LPS Act precludes a conservatee being under a LPS conservatorship and living in the community. No time frame is quantified in the LPS Act (as matters vary from conservatee to conservatee), but, in general, amongst the 58 county Public Guardian Offices, if a conservatee has been living in the community for an extended period of time, the legal justification to continue the LPS conservatorship diminishes and the conservatorship is likely to be dismissed. As such there is no common duration for a LPS conservatorship. It can indeed vary from a single LPS conservatorship lasting 30 years to multiple temporary LPS conservatorships being implemented over the course of a single year. Some family of mentally ill individuals believe that the LPS act favors the individual's civil rights too much when weighed against their self-evident need for treatment. It can be very difficult for their family member to be placed on a 5150 hold or on a LPS conservatorship. The LPS Act requires a "grave disability" to provide oneself with food, clothing, or shelter. Thus an individual may indeed be highly symptomatic, displaying paranoia, delusions, mania, etc., but if he or she can present a cogent plan to care for food, clothing, and shelter, he or she may very well be released from psychiatric care. Many have argued that revisions