Faith Myers

Psychiatric patient rights need a state enforcement mechanism.

It is in the shadows of long-accepted dehumanizing mental health laws that psychiatric patients are allowed to suffer.

How can the state be motivated to make improvements when it keeps secrets?

The therapeutic Mental Health Court did what the state of Alaska’s mental health care system and laws refused to do: set up a program where I could get the help I needed.

Every single policy and law that allowed for psychiatric patient mistreatment in Morningside Psychiatric Hospital should be eliminated.

How can state agencies or the Legislature make improvements in care for people they know little or nothing about?

Without the state asking the hard questions, it is not possible to improve patient outcomes.

Providers of psychiatric patient care must be required to provide statistics to the Legislature and the general public.

Alaska is one of the few states that has not written a state grievance law to protect all psychiatric patients in locked facilities or units.

There must be a permanent independent advisory committee to the Legislature that makes recommendations on the standard of patient care.

The rights of people in locked psychiatric facilities have not improved significantly over the last 60 years.

People with a mental illness appear to be a forgotten and unprotected class in Alaska.

The heavy concentration on patient rights at API alone is not sufficient.

In many ways, large acute care psychiatric facilities operate in secret from the Alaska Legislature and the general public, even the ones financially supported by the state.

Alaska went from the early 1960s, when psychiatric patients were locked up indefinitely, to today, where psychiatric patients are often dumped on the streets.