By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Clallam County’s Mental Health Court will begin serving its first participants this month, with the goal of helping people to stay out of justice and corrections systems and get their lives back on track.
Under a mental health court, non-violent offenders whose actions are deemed due to mental health issues are offered a chance to complete a supervised mental-health rehabilitation program in exchange for having charges dropped.
The court will be presided over by Judge Dave Neupert in District Court 1, who says he already has a half-dozen or so participants who have been referred by the Prosecutor’s Office and deemed eligible by court staff, but he sees the program growing much larger in the future.
“Ideally, we would start with six and build from that. I don’t know why we wouldn’t be able to accommodate, say, somewhere in the neighborhood of a 20-24 people as we’re moving ahead. As we move on, we’re going to have folks moving along through various phases. So, as folks are graduating in their phases, we’ll continue to have folks starting from the very beginning, and that’s how I see it working well.”
The court hired Birgit Talman from Peninsula Behavioral Health to manage the mental health court program staff, and Neupert says bringing in someone from the local mental health community will be an advantage as they get under way.
“We’ve had great support from the therapeutic community in our area, who recognize that our participants are going to be folks that were already here. And in a lot of cases, already known to treatment providers. And the only individual that needed to be hired was our mental health court Program Manager, Birgit Talman, who also has an extensive clinical background and came over from Peninsula Behavioral Health.”
A $230,000 grant from the state of Washington should be sufficient to fund the program for the first year. Judge Neupert says, after that, it should be sustainable by means of the 1/10 of 1% local sales tax for mental health and dependency issues known as the Hargrove Fund.
Neupert wanted us to be sure and include in our story one final message to the community.
“One thing that’s pertinent to everybody who’s concerned about good mental health in our community is the 988 National Suicide Prevention helpline. So, if anybody sees somebody who they think is in a mental health crisis, or if they’re worse, that they’re thinking of harming themselves, just call 988, like you’d call 911 if you saw smoke coming out of your neighbor’s house. Call 988. Help is three numbers away.”