Judge Milton Mack

Now, when we formed the National Task Force, one of the recommendations by the National Task Force was every state at the administrative level, Supreme Court level,

Every state should have a behavioral health administrator at that level.

And Michigan now has one.

Illinois has one.

Pennsylvania has one.

And this provides leadership at the state level.

Michigan and Wayne County, Judge Freddie Burton formed a behavioral health unit within the probate court to monitor this process from beginning to end to create accountability by the hospital, the community treatment system, and so forth.

And then the person he hired to run it has now been hired by the state to run the behavioral health unit for the state of Michigan.

And part of her mission is to find champions across the state.

We don't need a lot of them, but we need one for region, for example.

This can be copied across the country by each state court administrative office, having someone who's charged with that responsibility to find these individuals who are willing to do this.

So I'm seeing progress.

I will admit, for the first 20 years, I wasn't seeing much progress.

But things really started to change when that series came out.

I had a call from the Attorney Governor's office wanting to know if I would help fix the statute.

I thought back to my experience with the Mental Health Commission in 2004, where we made 70-some recommendations that got nothing.

So, is this not a wild goose chase?

I was assured it wasn't.

So I went up and did that, and...

Things are improving.