Judge Milton Mack

They actually chose the paper as the paper for that year that led to creation of a national task force.

And in the meantime, all of a sudden, logjam broke loose in Lansing.

I was able to get a series of bills passed in 2016 and 2018 that changed the way the process works in Michigan.

We're seeing real differences now.

Are there other things that you do as well?

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.