For decades the families of people with serious mental illnesses have been asking for assistance getting their loved ones the help that could change their lives — or save someone else’s.

And for decades the answer has always been the same: unless they were considered dangerous, mandatory treatment wasn’t an option.

That changed last week, with the signing of House Bill 1233, which changes the state’s standards for court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment and brings them in line with civil processes that are already used by 46 other states.

The catch, of course, is that while the General Assembly saw fit to update the state’s standards, it conveniently forgot to add funding for the community mental health services that will be more in demand as a result of these new standards. The bill also does not require counties without certain mental health services to make them available to individuals who need them.

So while legislators did a good deed by updating Pennsylvania’s tools for confronting serious mental illness, they also did nothing to remedy a patchwork system of treatment in which access to services will depend entirely upon where patients live. They have also created a situation where already-strained county mental health services will be under more pressure.

This is not a theoretical or overblown concern. The numbers say many Pennsylvanians are already struggling with access to mental health services.

According to a 2018 report from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Butler County is home to 253 mental health providers, for an average of 135 providers per 100,000 people.

That’s below the state average of 176 providers per 100,000 people, and far below the national average of 214 providers per 100,000 people.

The county is far from alone in this struggle. According to the report, 53 of the state’s 67 counties lag below both the state and national average for mental health treatment access.

The issue of access is not going away — recall in August, when the state’s school safety task force issued a final report that, among other recommendations, said the state should increase students’ access to mental health services.

Work at the federal level, where lawmakers have advanced bills in recent years that improve grant programs, reward evidence-based care and restructure agencies that coordinate interstate care, have given us hope that leaders at every level are serious about tackling this issue.

However, the crisis — increasing demand for psychiatric services and a growing shortage of outpatient and inpatient mental health programs — has endured.

Pennsylvania is not alone in this fight. A 2017 report from the National Council for Behavioral Health found that 77 percent of counties nationwide have severe shortages of behavioral health professionals.

Simply changing government standards for mandating treatment for some patients won’t help fix those problems.