If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, call the Maine Crisis Hotline at 888-568-1112.
The historic settlement that has governed Maine’s mental health system for more than 30 years could wind down by 2023 under a new agreement between the state, advocates and the retired judge overseeing the system.
The state has historically had only mixed results in complying with the consent decree of 1990, which settled a lawsuit from patients of the former Augusta Mental Health Institute after overcrowding, a paltry community mental health system and other problems related to the large institution on a Victorian-era campus in Augusta contributed to the deaths of 10 patients.
Gov. Janet Mills hailed the pact announced Friday as a “landmark” step. The Democrat’s administration has been on a path toward winding down the decree since 2019, when retired Maine Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Daniel Wathen, the court master in charge of enforcing the consent decree, said the state was “90-plus” percent in compliance.
State psychiatric hospitals must meet certain benchmarks under the new agreement between the Mills administration, Wathen and Disability Rights Maine lawyers representing the plaintiffs in the 1990 lawsuit. The state must also contract with Disability Rights Maine to provide more advocacy services and assign a liaison to assist patients having trouble getting timely help.
“I commend the parties for reaching this agreement, which sets forth a reasonable and meaningful definition of substantial compliance and provides the tools needed to achieve it,” Wathen said in a statement.
Among the many requirements are that state-run hospitals discharge 90 percent of patients deemed ready for discharge within 45 days of such a determination and respond to 90 percent of phone calls to a crisis line within 10 seconds. If the state meets those requirements in four of the next six quarters, the state can go through a judicial process to end the agreement.
AMHI, which was replaced by the 92-bed Riverview Psychiatric Center in 2004, dates back to 1840 as part of what was intended as a progressive movement to get people with mental illness out of jails and into institutions. The campus was intentionally built directly across the Kennebec River from the State House so state officials never forgot the residents there.
The institution grew steadily into the 1900s, peaking at 1,700 patients in 1960 before a national movement toward deinstitutionalization reduced the population to 350 by 1975. But states including Maine struggled to establish the robust network of community services that was intended to accompany the shift. The lawsuit leading to the decree was emblematic of that.
Riverview was decertified by the federal government in 2013 after sheriff’s deputies used handcuffs and Tasers on patients there. It was recertified after Mills took over in 2019. It was fully staffed that year for the first time in 20 years.
Wathen has praised the state for changes made since then, including during the coronavirus pandemic. In his latest regular report on Maine’s progress toward complying with the consent decree, Wathen said Riverview staff had done a “commendable job” protecting patients and employees since the March 2020 start of the COVID-19 pandemic.