Using Courts To Help Solve the Mental Health Crisis

Mental health courts, where the prosecutor, defense attorney and other participants in the criminal proceedings could craft a treatment and rehabilitation program for people suffering from severe mental illness, is suggested as a promising solution to the issues that accused individuals with mental disabilities encounter. Mental health court is a form of collaborative court based on the highly successful drug court model that provides services and treatments to participants while emphasizing collaborative problem solving between all parties. This departure from traditional criminal court is premised on the notion that underlying mental health issues are paramount to questions of factual guilt or innocence and that supporting the defendant leads to better long-term outcomes than the adversarial posture of prosecution and defense.

Read the full story here.