NAMI Michigan

The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Michigan calls upon legislators to demonstrate their leadership by supporting mental health courts and rejecting cuts to their funding. The nine pilot mental health courts currently established or being established in the State of Michigan are powerful and innovative tools for treating mentally ill individuals and diverting them from incarceration. These courts use their authority to oversee and direct comprehensive treatment plans, developed and implemented by Community Mental Health, for individuals who suffer from serious and persistent mental illness and whose mental illness has resulted in involvement with law enforcement. Instead of being jailed, which most likely would result in worsening mental health, these individuals are given the opportunity of receiving quality treatment so that they can start over, transform their lives, and eventually reenter the community as healthy and productive citizens.

Though some of these courts, such as the ones in Genesee and Jackson County, were operational before they received funding from state government, most of them were only able to begin organizing and taking cases as a result of the funding. Loss of this funding could result in the collapse of many of these fledgling mental health courts.

Mental health courts are merely one step in addressing the massive problem of incarceration of the mentally ill. Clearly, the State of Michigan must move decisively and with vision to implement policy that will prevent the incarceration of mentally ill individuals and provide quality treatment to move individuals with mental illness into recovery. Although mental health courts only begin to address the needs of the incarcerated mentally ill, their development is a very positive step and deserves the unqualified support of elected leaders as well as the entire community.