Psych
Alternative Clinical – Mental Health Court
3.27.2013

I attended a morning and afternoon session at the Mental Health Court in Mesa on Wednesday, March 27th. They moved through the cases fairly quickly and each case presented with at least two witnesses who were there to testify why court-ordered treatment should be in place for the defendant, according to their own personal experience with them. Majority of these witnesses petitioning for mandatory treatment were family members of the individual - I sympathized with how difficult that would be. There were a lot of cases presented, more than I would have guessed that they would be able to get through, but there were two that stood out for me. One was a petition of a woman in early to mid thirties who is diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression with agoraphobia. Her mother and sister were there to testify in favor of in patient treatment, which was granted. They testified that she stopped going in for her resperdone shots around 3 months ago and she’s steadily declined since then, from no longer leaving the house even to get the mail to only coming out of her bedroom for dinner and refusing to bathe. The sister and daughter attested to the fact that they themselves were being treated for several different mental health issues and they both came across as severely medicated to the point where their affect was completely flat. The other case which stood out to me was because the petition presented was