Mental Health Courts Help Afflicted

Mental Health Courts Help Afflicted Learn to Control Illness and Addiction

(BOISE, Idaho Feb 18, 2005) — Peggy Reese spent much of the last decade ricocheting from one psychotic episode to the next, trying to smooth out the rough edges of her life with methamphetamine, heroin, alcohol anything she could find.

Except the help she really needed.

"I got busted, thank God. It's a good thing, because I was going to prison and didn't want to. The judge offered to let me go to mental health court instead," Reese said. "I would not be alive, would not be here, without the mental health court."

The Idaho court is the brain child of Judge Brent Moss. He was tired of seeing drug addicts sent to prison, without treatment, when many were trying to self-medicate to control a mental illness they did not understand.

"When I was doing drug court five years ago, we could immediately see that there are people who are failing. We couldn't get them through. Though they were getting clear of drugs, they didn't like the way it felt to be sober," Moss said.

The judge realized that mentally ill defendants were not getting the help they needed and he thought they were getting in prison.

"I was naive," Moss said.

Tom Beauclair, director of the state Department of Corrections, told lawmakers last month that prisons are not properly equipped to deal with the mentally ill.

"If I had to rank two issues that are very big problems for the Department of Corrections, it's drugs and mental health," Beauclair said.

Before her introduction to Moss, they were big problems for Reese as well.

Reese's 5-foot, 5-inch frame weighed just 85 pounds. But that frail body carried a heavy burden: an addiction to drugs and alcohol and a myriad of mental illnesses that Reese can recite like a litany.

"I'm bipolar, with obsessive compulsive disorder, schizoaffective with mood disorder and psychotic episodes, and I have disassociative disorder, which is basically multiple personality disorder with a new name," Reese said. "That's why I used so much drugs, and I've been doing them since I was 13. When I was 19 I was doing heroin. I was manufacturing methamphetamine."

Though they made her feel better, the drugs did not help her mental illness.

When she was ordered to prison for a methamphetamine conviction, the sentencing judge Moss offered her an alternative. If Reese would successfully complete mental health court, he said, she could avoid her prison sentence.

But graduating from mental health court was no easy task.

"The first 90 days, your life is absolutely scripted," Moss said.

Court volunteers and workers from other agencies check in with the defendant sometimes two or three times a day making sure they are taking medication, staying clean of illicit drugs and even paying rent and keeping their homes clean.

Participants must take part in therapy, classes about their illness and support groups.

Lance Hill, 40, who entered mental health court after a violent dispute with his girlfriend and a police officer, said the classes and therapy taught him to recognize the symptoms of his bipolar and schizoaffective disorder before they get out of hand.

"I would become agitated easier before. I do have a temper, I was very angry. Before it was just different, like I wasn't in control of myself, like some other force was driving me. But I learned about the illness, about how I respond and how I can change behaviors," Hill said.

"If you don't want to change when you go in there, you're not going to last very long. You'll go back to jail, back to an institution or die because you're not trying to help yourself or anything," Hill said.

Participants join Alcoholics Anonymous or other addict support groups. But Reese found that dealing with her mental illness reduced her craving for illegal drugs.

"But once they get you so you're on medication and compliant, and they check on you every night to make sure you're OK, it gets better. Now I'm not even drinking. I've been clean 19 months with no relapse, not even a thought of it," Reese said. "Isn't that incredible? You don't know what you're feeling, why you're feeling it until someone teaches you."

The success of the Rexburg court has prompted Kootenai County officials to start one. Soon, Moss hopes, mental health courts could spring up throughout Idaho.

"If you could see the before and after pictures of these people in two years, no one would recognize them. It just takes time, and once they graduate, it's almost like you're a father, you're so proud of them," Moss said.

Now graduates, Reese and Hill are believers in the program. They both take part in a support group for mental health court alumni. Reese said the court did more than heal her mind it healed her family as well.

"My daughter just called to tell me, 'I love you and have a nice day,'" Reese said, her voice heavy with emotion. "We've never had that kind of relationship before. I have a grandson, and I can remember him growing up now. With her childhood, it's kind of in and out because I was drugged. I have a life now."

top ~ articles table of contents

We subscribe to the HONcode principles. Verify here.