Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act - Background To The Act

Background To The Act

Alaska possessed no mental health treatment facilities prior to the passage of the 1956 Act. At the time of the Act's passage, Alaska was not a U.S. state, being constituted instead as a territory of the United States. The treatment of the mentally ill was governed by an agreement with the state of Oregon dating back to the turn of the 19th to 20th century. On June 6, 1900, the United States Congress enacted a law permitting the government of the then District of Alaska to provide mental health care for Alaskans. In 1904, a contract was signed with Morningside Hospital, privately owned and operated by Henry Waldo Coe in Portland, Oregon, under which Alaskan mental patients would be sent to the hospital for treatment. A commitment regime was established under which a person said to be mentally ill was to be brought before a jury of six people, who would rule him sane or insane. The patient was routinely sent to prison until his release or transfer to Portland; at no point in this ruling was a medical or psychiatric examination required.

By the 1940s it was recognized that this arrangement was unsatisfactory. The American Medical Association conducted a series of studies in 1948, followed by a Department of the Interior study in 1950. They highlighted the deficiencies of the program: commitment procedures in Alaska were archaic, and the long trip to Portland had a negative effect on patients and their families. In addition, an audit of the hospital contract found that the Sanatorium Company, which owned the hospital, had been padding its expenses. This had enabled it to make an excess profit of $69,000 per year (equivalent to over $588,000 per year at 2007 prices).

The studies recommended a comprehensive overhaul of the system, with the development of an in-state mental health program for Alaska. This proposal was widely supported by the public and politicians. At the start of 1956, in the second session of the 84th Congress, Representative Edith Green (D-Oregon) introduced the Alaska Mental Health Bill (H.R. 6376) in the House of Representatives. The bill had been written by Bob Bartlett, the Congressional Delegate from the Alaska Territory who later became a U.S. Senator. Senator Richard L. Neuberger (D-Oregon) sponsored an equivalent bill, S. 2518, in the Senate.