As the presiding judge of Broward County, Florida’s Misdemeanor Mental Health Court, I believe it is important to promote access to community care and recovery. Therefore, mental health literacy is a key facet of court process.
In this regard, I provide community mental health resource books and brochures from the Broward Chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and its Family-to-Family educational program. Moreover, in a trauma-informed court that serves men and women who have experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), court dialogues about the findings of the ACE Study are educational and empowering. These discussions give voice to court participants and create a classroomlike atmosphere to describe the 10 childhood experiences identified as risk factors for chronic medical disease in adulthood and collateral social consequences, such as substance use, addiction and incarceration.
In terms of the integration of the science of behavioral health into court process, it was not until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the data about the alarming surge of the suicide rate (April 2016) that I realized the need to prioritize suicide prevention in the mental health court: Suicide surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years.
[For more of this story, written by Ginger Lerner-Wren, go to http://jjie.org/2017/01/23/its...nile-justice-system/]
Comments (0)