OPINION: Alaska needs to stop treating mental illness like a crime

In the darkest times of mental illness, people suffer additional trauma behind closed doors in a mental health facility due to loss of rights and abuse. In Alaska, patients in locked psychiatric facilities have always been treated as if their mental illness had caused them to commit a crime.

In Alaska in the 1950s, it was literally a crime to develop mental illness and become a burden on the government. Psychiatric patients are allowed to suffer in the shadow of long-accepted, dehumanizing mental health laws. One of the main reasons: Patient protection laws today do not have an effective enforcement mechanism or oversight.

In 1958, the Alaska territorial government was responsible for mental health laws and regulations. At that time, approximately 350 Alaskans were incarcerated at Morningside Psychiatric Hospital in Portland, Oregon. The average length of stay for half of the patients was between 6 and 9 years. For all intents and purposes, the patients at Morningside were at the mercy of the psychiatric hospital director, who had no incentive to discharge patients because each patient meant more money.

As someone who has spent about a year in locked psychiatric facilities, crisis treatment centers, and psychiatric emergency rooms, I recognize that the government has a duty to protect people from posing a danger to themselves or others. But what Alaska is doing in the process of protecting it is depriving psychiatric patients of basic rights. The mere development of mental illness is not a crime. The managers of psychiatric institutions go too far to achieve their goals and too many basic rights of psychiatric patients are removed.

In 2023, I was given a tour of the 80-bed state-run Alaska Psychiatric Institute. The profile of psychiatric patients in closed institutions has changed little in 150 years: people with an intellectual or developmental disability and a mental illness, people who are going through a psychotic break in which they lose touch with reality, and people with behavioral problems without psychological ones disease. All patients in closed facilities have one thing in common: they cannot protect themselves from mistreatment and do not have an effective voice.

In 1872, 152 years ago, journalist Julius Chambers pretended to be mentally ill and was admitted to the Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum in New York City to report on the abuse of patients. After 14 days, Chambers made some suggestions that are still relevant today and should have been adopted by the Alaska Legislature 50 years ago:

1. “Eliminate the element of secrecy – because madness is not criminal.”

2. “Provide better classification of patients so that the harmless is not associated with the malignant.” The crazy need a standard to return to reason.”

3. “Put the caregivers under such supervision that the commission of atrocities is impossible.”

The newspaper stories written by Julius Chambers were published as a book called A Mad World and Its Inhabitants.

The legitimate calls by Chambers and others to improve psychiatric patient care over the years have been ignored by the Alaska Legislature and state authorities. For 30 years, the state-run Alaska Psychiatric Institute has had a 10-bed forensics unit. Due to a lack of forensic beds, violent patients are placed in wards with non-violent patients. In 2017, there were 50 patient assaults at API. And in 2022, police were called 117 times to subdue violent patients. With proper government planning, API could have had a larger forensic department with enough staff to deal with troublesome patients.

In 2003, I was a patient at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. Per hospital practice, male staff members were permitted to enter a female patient’s bedroom, bathroom, or shower to conduct a routine safety check while the patient was undressed. Because the practice was traumatizing, I argued that I had a right to privacy and that female staff should be assigned to conduct routine security checks in sensitive areas. API, which is run by the state, said I have no right to privacy.

In 2007, Senate Bill 8 was in committee. The bill required, among other things, that routine safety checks in a psychiatric patient’s bedroom, bathroom or shower must be conducted by the same staff as the patient. State authorities testified in panels that patients had no right to privacy. Senate Bill 8 became state law in 2008 as AS 18.20.095. To date, API has not written a policy requiring the hospital to comply with gender selection law.

In my experience, all rights afforded to psychiatric patients are viewed by government agencies and hospital staff from the 100-year-old perspective that becoming mentally ill is a crime and that patients should be treated as such. The Alaska Legislature must update protective laws for psychiatric patients in locked facilities and add an enforcement mechanism.

Faith J. Myers is the author of the book “Going Crazy in Alaska.”

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