Judge Milton Mack

So I'm televised a mental health trial.

That led to the investigative reporter coming in and saying he wanted to do a series, filming cases, talking to the family members, talking to persons with mental illness and so forth.

And the series was called Waiting for Disaster.

I said, the way the mental health system works is you just imagine a train going down the tracks and the bridge is out.

So we have two choices.

We can dial up the engineer and say the bridge is out without the train, or we can park ambulances at the bottom of the ravine and pick up the dead and wounded.

Well, that's how the mental health system was working.

We wait for crisis, and then we intervene.

Now, the 2004 Mental Health Commission report said, we live in the recovery era where mental illness is treatable.

Recovery is possible.

People with mental illness can lead productive, satisfying lives if they get early treatment.

But the system was not designed to permit early treatment.

It was designed to wait until that magic moment just before someone actually killed themselves or killed someone else or did something terrible.

My effort has been trying to change the system.

Ironically, I had thought I'd run into a brick wall with Michigan.

I've been a probate judge for 25 years, and the chief justice asked me to be state court administrator, so I agreed to do it.

And when I became a state court administrator, this made me a member of the conference of state court administrators.

They drew a paper over here on a topic of some sort.

So I volunteered to do a paper on the mental health system and how we can change the system.

So intervene early, reduce hospitalization and incarceration, and improve people's lives.