This policy point falls under all the categories: Liberty, Health, Economy.
NEEDED: Advancing the most recent, progressive, scholarly mental health treatment studies via the legal process, since jails and prisons are now the biggest psychiatric hospitals. Since, by law, each community is ruled by its own “standard of care,” geographical areas that lag in progressive training are most adversely affected. This negatively affects individual quality of care, while becoming an exponential multi-faceted burden to the state, often leading to criminalization because there are no alternative solutions. Newly formed legal help should spearhead assistance so overcrowded/overworked facilities, i.e., jails, psychiatric units, Residential Care Facilities (RCF) and Community Mental Health centers are kept abreast of the most current and effective ways to protect the most vulnerable, and alleviate the revolving door of “frequent flyer” crisis-to-criminalization repetition. More legal support is an essential need for patients and families. This affects all municipalities. This should include educating attorneys via CLE and in all law schools about mental disability law, and creating supplementals in each state (or a federal document) as a guide to existing statutes that are being ignored, to the detriment of suffering individuals.