Defining A Mental Health Court
Mental health courts vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but most share a number of characteristics. The Council of State Governments Justice Center has defined the “essential elements” of mental health courts. The Justice Center, in a publication detailing the essential elements, notes that the majority of mental health courts share the following characteristics:
- A specialized court docket, which employs a problem-solving approach to court processing in lieu of more traditional court procedures for certain defendants with mental illnesses;
- Judicially supervised, community-based treatment plans for each defendant participating in the court, which a team of court staff and mental health professionals design and implement;
- Regular status hearings at which treatment plans and other conditions are periodically reviewed for appropriateness, incentives are offered to reward adherence to court conditions, and sanctions are imposed on participants who do not adhere to the conditions of participation;
- Criteria defining a participant’s completion of (sometimes called graduation from) the program.
Read more about this topic: Mental Health Court
Famous quotes containing the words defining, mental, health and/or court:
“The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.”
—David Blankenhorn (20th century)
“It is a monstrous thing to force a child to learn Latin or Greek or mathematics on the ground that they are an indispensable gymnastic for the mental powers. It would be monstrous even if it were true.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“As they move into sharing parenting, men often are apprentices to women because they are not yet as skilled in child care. Mothers have to be willing to teach fathers—both by stepping in and showing and by stepping back and letting them learn.”
—Nancy Press Hawley. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“A friend i’the court is better than a penny in purse.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)