Mental Health Courts

Webinar Title: Native Veterans Project: Protecting those who Protected Us
The Native Veterans Project is a BJA-funded project on creating a veterans clinic in
Indian Country. There is limited access to legal assistance by low-income individuals,
including veterans, appearing in tribal courts. A tribal legal clinic model will focus on
and address the needs of Native American veterans as a high volume of requests from
veterans seeking solutions to their legal issues. The clinic will use medical-legal

The Policy Project team meets monthly, to work on the planning and development of the Collateral Consequences Policy Publication. NAICJA staff meets with Consultant Amanda Whiteeagle monthly to coordinate on the project. The project will develop publication on the collateral consequences of the new tribal authorities VAWA and TLOA on justice-involved people in tribal courts.

Monthly meetings with the Veterans Project consultants and NAICJA staff for the development of the Veterans Project Curriculum.

NCSC personel will develop a national survey to state courts asking states to identify the status of diversion programs in the respective states. Follow-up work using these survey responses includes developing a series of court leadership briefs on jail and court diversion programs informed by these interviews. The leadership briefs will articulate guiding principles, essential elements, data requirements and descriptions of existing evidence- based programs across the nation.

Following up on products developed by the National Judicial Task Force to Examine State Courts’ Response to Mental Illness, NCSC will conduct interviews and focus groups to help inform nationwide efforts focusing on diversion of mental health cases.

Transgender adults have a prevalence of substance use disorder (SUD) almost four times that of cisgender adults. They face challenges that include dealing with extremely high rates of childhood trauma, high Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) scores, widespread discrimination, violence, practitioner lack of cultural competency, stigma due to their gender identity and expression, and multiple minority stressors.

Treatment courts will learn to understand the specific needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) participants to remove access barriers and individualize treatment plans. This module will address cultural competency by developing health literacy skills in speaking about sexual orientation and issues of cultural humility such as identifying and stopping microaggressions and collecting accurate data.

The NDCRC began conducting a study in 2020 on how treatment courts are portrayed in media. The study tracks mentions of "treatment court" and "drug court" terms in written news media and will catalog and codify the discourse to gauge perception of treatment courts. A first batch of data were collected in November and December of 2020; a second batch of data are being collected in January 2022.

NDCRC Co-directors Dr. Christina Lanier and Dr. Kristen DeVall are working with Dr. Jacqueline Van Wormer of NADCP to collect information on peer recovery support specialists (PRSS). Survey information includes the scope of the role and how treatment courts are utilizing PRSS. The survey opened on November 8, 2021 and was intended to close January 12, 2022. The survey was reopened to allow additional responses in Idaho and closed officially on 2/28/2022.

NDCRC co-directors Dr. Christina Lanier and Dr. Kristen DeVall participated in two presentations during NADCP's RISE21 conference in August 2021: "Recovery Oriented Language: Why Words Matter" and "Say Yes to the Dress: How to Pick the Right Training for You."