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Mental Health Courts
Kevin Maher ’04
 The
Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis Lecture Series in Law and Psychology
was held on Feb. 6 at the Law School with a talk by David Wertheimer,
M.S.W., M.Div., who discussed “Mental Health Courts: Momentary Fad
or Long-Term Solution?” Working in the mental health field for over
two decades, Wertheimer has developed sub-specialties in dealing with
gender issues and counseling those suffering from post-traumatic stress.
Wertheimer’s lecture focused on
the essential components of “mental health court” models.
Such courts have been developed over the past five years in a number of
jurisdictions across the nation to offer an alternative to continually
reincarcerating those who suffer from serious mental illness for committing
(mostly) non-violent, misdemeanors. Rooted somewhat in existing “drug
court” models, these courts rely on “therapeutic jurisprudence,”
a concept that involves the restructuring of traditional court processes
to capitalize on opportunities for positive and clinically supportive
interventions. He elaborated on the results of formal studies to measure
the effectiveness of this rather non-traditional method of criminal justice
system intervention and weighed its pros and cons from both a legal and
psychological perspective.
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