Mental health more than an afterthought

In this week’s edition of the Anchorage Press, the Frontiersman’s sister publication, reporter Scott Christansen has taken steps more journalists should follow when venturing inside a courthouse.

The facts of the case covered in the story —which took place at Mile 103 of the Parks Highway — share a common theme with many criminal cases presented at the Palmer Courthouse. The defendant’s actions — which we must warn readers were extremely violent and cruel — involve domestic violence, bestiality and the fatal beating of a dog, and are incomprehensible to ordinary folk.

Why would a person act this way? (We believe no reasonable person would.)

In today’s competitive 24-hour news cycle, reporters too often focus on the where, how and when details of a story without taking the time to ask that other more difficult question. Why? The Press has gone that extra mile. We’ve reprinted the story starting on Page 3 of today’s Frontiersman. And what they found would be shocking if it weren’t so common.

Defendant Orrin Pinard had a long history of bizarre and violent behavior and nearly all of it can be traced to his mental health issues for which treatment attempts had been, to that point, unsuccessful.

Name a recent murder defendant in the Valley and odds are good the person had an untreated psychological disorder. Samuel Clark, who shot a friend in a Talkeetna restaurant in October was clearly unstable. Christopher Erin Rogers who killed his father and wounded his father’s fiancée with a machete in 2007 was also mentally disturbed.

For more than a year and a half a reporter here periodically checked in on the case of Robert Montecelli, who burned his father’s house down in February 2008. If there was one thing all parties to that case could agree on it was that Montecelli had severe psychological problems. But the system wasn’t set up to handle him. He wound up serving more jail time — a lot of which was at a mental institution — while everyone tried to figure out what to do with him than he eventually received as a sentence.

The subject of mental health care has been in the national spotlight lately courtesy of the man who grievously wounded Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed or wounded numerous others at a public event in Tucson Jan. 8. As the story of that man’s history unfolded, it became clear that he began his descent into madness many months prior to the shooting. From our treks to the courthouse it has become clear to us that we allow mental disorders to go untreated at our own peril. The assassination attempt on Giffords only underscores the need for health care treatment for the mentally ill.

Alaska, and the nation in general, need to find ways to help people suffering with mental illnesses before their psychoses get the better of them and they harm innocent people.

We cannot accept a system that will only treat a person after he or she has acted out in violence.

The head of an organization that tried to provide Pinard with counseling told the Press that funding is always an issue. If it’s a matter of money to do some preventative care on the mentally vulnerable among us we can think of few state projects more worthy of our attention than identifying and treating the mentally ill before it’s too late. And, in the end, which is more expensive; treating a person on an out-patient basis with some kind of system to ensure he or she is keeping up with medications or warehousing a person long-term in a correctional facility?

The article in the Press ends with Pinard saying he is glad he wound up behind bars because he’s finally getting treatment that works. That the state had to lock him up before a lasting solution was found is something also entirely too common in Alaska and nationally.

We can do better. And we must do better. Because the status quo is killing us.