More and more mental health courts are popping up. It is wonderful they are trying to help the mentally ill. Yet the courts should not be mandating Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings, where they are often told not to take there meds and make disparaging remarks about the mental health field.AA has no training to deal with paranoid schizophrenics or suicidal people.

Michigan’s treatment of mentally ill people has disgraced the state, as hundreds of thousands have gone without treatment and ended up in county jails and state prisons, warehoused at a cost to taxpayers of $35,000 a year each.

It’s a common and tragic story: Mentally ill defendants — often abusing drugs — cycle through the criminal justice system repeatedly for petty offenses until they are slapped with lengthy prison sentences as repeat offenders.

Since 2008, however, eight mental health court pilot programs, now serving nearly 700 people a year, have given hope to mentally ill offenders like Angela DeCant, 35; Henry Smith, 47; and Steven Townsend, 52. Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy Kenny and others who preside over the courts have the option of sentencing them to 18 months of intensely supervised probation and treatment.

Working with community-based nonprofits like Detroit Central City Community Mental Health, participants get medications, attend relapse prevention classes and group therapy, meet with psychiatrists, undergo residential treatment, and talk with job and housing specialists to get their lives on track.

The pilot courts work at a fraction of the cost of incarceration. But they will end Sept. 30, when the annual $1.65-million federal grant expires, unless the governor and state Legislature find another way to pay for them.

For starters, Gov. Rick Snyder has put $1 million for the mental health courts in his 2013 budget, but legislators must do even better. With county jails and state prisons becoming Michigan’s largest mental health institutions, this is no time to end a rare success story.

Salvaging lives
Over the last two decades, mental health care in Michigan has eroded, leaving hundreds of thousands without treatment and pushing many of them into county jails and state prisons.

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