IMPROVING JUSTICE AND MENTAL-HEALTH SYSTEMS INTERACTIONS - IN SEARCH OF A NEW PARADIGM

Over the last three decades, theorists and practitioners in the field of mental health law have adhered to a doctrinal analysis paradigm characterized by an emphasis on legal doctrine, rational analysis of self-evident, albeit abstract legal principles, and law reform. Acknowledging that the paradigm has been highly successful in facilitating major reform of mental health law, the thesis of this article is that its value for understanding and improving justice and mental health systems interactions is largely exhausted. It urges a "paradigm shift" to an approach that emphasizes the interrelated steps, tasks, and processes in the interactions of the justice and mental health systems. It suggests several directions where such a shift might lead: (a) inquiry focused on such organizational components of justice and mental health interactions as court clinics; (b) the development of a meaningful statistical portrait of the number and composition of cases that impact both the justice and mental health systems; (c) a better understanding of the missions, goals, objectives, and administrative structures of the components in the justice and mental health systems interactions; (d) a greater emphasis on the work of trial courts, as opposed to appeals courts; and (e) the development of a new information architecture for the field of mental health law.