According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 33,300 people who suffered from a mental illness died by suicide in the U.S. in 2006. This number increases each year.

At the same time, states nationwide have cut $4.5 billion from mental healthcare funding since 2008. But Virginia is taking steps to turn this trend around and become a true leader in the mental healthcare field.

After a 5-minute floor speech in the Virginia Senate on Feb. 10, Senate Bill 260 was approved with a 38-0 vote. The bill would allow mental health workers more time to find psychiatric beds in crisis situations and would increase the amount of time from six to 24 hours in an emergency custody.

It would also require state facilities to accept psychiatric patients under temporary detention orders if private beds were not available during the first eight hours. The state would also begin using an electronic registry of acute psychiatric beds to provide real-time information to mental health workers.

The bill has generated a focus on mental health from the General Assembly. S.B. 260 is now headed to the House where it will be combined with several other bills of the same nature.

"Nationally, the number of psychiatric beds has been steadily declining as hospitals moved away from institutionalizing patients and budget cuts have taken hold," MSNBC’s Suzy Khimm reported. "The number of hospital beds in freestanding psychiatric hospitals has dropped 13 percent between 2002 and 2011."

The lack of beds and "being failed by the system" is what made Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds' propose the bill; he wants to change America's mental health system. And Deeds has a strong personal tie to this issue.

In November 2013, Deeds took his mentally ill son, Gus, to an emergency room but was sent home without proper treatment or medication due to lack of beds. The following morning after Gus was released, he attacked his father, stabbing him several times. Gus then committed suicide; not uncommon for individuals with mental illness.

"Mental health funding and reimbursement has severely limited inpatient treatment to the extent that it is available," Dr. Russel T. Joffe told MedPage Today. "With pressure to reduce length of stay, most patients are discharged after the immediate therapeutic crisis has resolved but before they are adequately stabilized."

According to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), “the number of state psychiatric beds decreased by 14 percent from 2005 to 2010. In 2005, there were 50,509 state psychiatric beds available nationwide. By 2010, the number had shrunk to 43,318.”

The bed shortage problem is a widespread one.

In the United States, 32 states had bed shortages at the critical or severe level, 42 states had less than half the minimum number of beds needed, and six states had less than 20 percent of the minimum beds needed to provide adequate care.

Bed shortages in many U.S. cities have driven emergency rooms to keep the mentally ill in holding rooms and hallways, where they suffer without treatment. Doris Fuller, executive director of the Virginia-based TAC told 60 Minutes that the "recommendation is 50 beds per 100,000 people to provide the minimally adequate intensive care for people in crisis."

After Deeds' tragedy, he heard from people across Virginia with similar situations who haven't received the attention needed. The bill is "going to fix some of the front-end problem I hope, but this isn't the end-all," Deeds said.

In a recent 60 Minutes report, journalist Scott Pelley showed the public that mental illnesses are everywhere around the community, but are hidden due to the stigma. He spoke with a group of mothers who had sons/daughters with mental illnesses.

Pelley asked what they thought the difference was between an individual with an illness like cancer and an individual with a mental illness; "casseroles" was the answer. One mother explained the difference in detail.

She said when her daughter was hit by a car and had a broken leg, she was presented casseroles from friends and family who felt their pain during the situation. What these friends and family didn't know was that the same daughter was in a psychiatric ward six months prior and the family didn't receive a single casserole.

According to William R. Dubin, M.D. and Paul Jay Fink, M.D., the stigma around mentally ill individuals affects every aspect of their lives. From insurance to housing to jobs, it stops these individuals from getting the best treatment, or in some instances, getting any treatment at all. This stigma is just one of Deeds' reasons for pushing S.B. 260.

"There’s just a lack of equity in the way we as a society, and certainly as a government and insurance industry, medical industry, with the way we look at mental health issues,” Deeds said.

It was stressed that the costs of the bill should be compared to not taking proper steps; running into the risk of people who need help being left on their own when they are still a danger to themselves and others.

"When a tragedy like this happens, it's because something in the mental health system has gone terribly wrong," said Mira Signer, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Virginia.

The bill is making Virginia take the first step to improve mental health, and Deeds hopes to do the same throughout America. This is “just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.