Judge Milton Mack

One of the things I do is I do CIT training for law enforcement.

And I tell them about the new mental health code in Michigan, how it's now an inpatient, it's now an outpatient model in an outpatient world.

And when I say that,

It's because over 90% of all the treatment for mental illness is on an outpatient basis.

So the system should reflect that.

We should find a way to help people get help when they need it.

If you go back to 1963, the Community Mental Health Act, that bill was designed to do two things.

Significantly reduce the number of people in hospital and provide an outpatient system of care as an alternative.

The outpatient treatment system didn't happen.

So what happened?

We got 2 million people in America with serious mental illness in jail every year.

We have well over 300,000 in our state prison system with serious mental illness because you're left untreated.

People think that guardianship is for adults.

No.

Over half of our guardianships are for people with serious mental illness who never got the treatment they needed when it would have made a difference.

So my objection has been to create a system where we intervene early and avoid the use of hospitals as well as jails and prisons.

Because hospitals really are not therapeutic environments, number one.

Well, they're more than jails and prisons, but they're designed to stabilize someone.

not to get them into recovery, not to get them well, but stable.

So just for example, in Wayne County, which is where Detroit's located, we did a study.