OPINION: Why the Mental Health Court is necessary

On May 30, there was a gathering at the Boney Courthouse to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Anchorage Mental Health Court, the first of many therapeutic courts that followed in Alaska.

Besides the several hundred people that attended, retired judge Stephanie Rhoades spoke as one of the founders of the Mental Health Court, along with Justice Jennifer Henderson of the Alaska Court System. Both of them spoke about the positive outcomes for participants. Twenty years ago, I went through the Mental Health Court Program. And I have since testified to the Alaska Legislature on the need for funding therapeutic courts.

I believe it is, in part, the failure of Alaska state agencies and the Legislature to provide fair psychiatric patient rights and accessible mental health recovery programs that brought about the need for the therapeutic courts.

In 2003, the police came to my apartment in Anchorage with a court order to take me to the Alaska Psychiatric Institute for a forced psychiatric evaluation. They placed me in handcuffs. I asked the police if they would get my jacket, shoes, keys and glasses. The police refused my request. I was hustled out the door in winter, barefoot and cold, without glasses, to be transported in a marked police car to API.

In my 2003 psychiatric evaluation and treatment at API, I spent five months, and just like the three previous times that I was locked in API, I was basically dumped on the streets after discharge with no help and no future.

For me, 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.

In the best-case scenario, the state of Alaska should be setting up programs and options for people with a severe mental illness before they are charged with a crime. But in the absence of that, the Mental Health Court is necessary.

Faith J. Myers spent more than seven months locked in psychiatric facilities and is the author of a book, “Going Crazy in Alaska: A history of Alaska’s treatment of psychiatric patients.”

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