News Summary

FAIRFIELD — Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton has been a national and state advocate for mental health dockets for seven years.

The justice spoke to the Fairfield Rotary Club on Friday, Oct. 3, about that advocacy, and how she received help from then-Akron Municipal Judge Elinor Stormer and Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Sage, two judges who had established a mental health docket in Ohio.

"It sounded like a much better way to deal with this problem," Stratton said.

With Stormer, Sage and a handful of others, they first met seven years ago to form the Advisory Committee on Mental Illness and the Courts with no funding and little more than her clout as an Ohio Supreme Court justice.

"There seems to be a better way to deal with this, I don't want to study this ... there's already a study that tells us this," she said. "I want action."

When her initiative started, there were six mental health dockets in the country, two in Ohio. Today, there are about 140 dockets nationwide — 32 of which are in Ohio.

Stratton has referred to the current prison and jail system as "the de facto mental health system of our day."

Stratton realized the problems as a trial court judge in Franklin County, she said.

"Our system was very fractured. Mental health wouldn't take them if they had a felony. Drug and alcohol wouldn't take them if they had mental health issues," she said. "Often I would put them in prison because I had no place else to put them thinking foolishly they might get better care and treatment, then I found out later jails and prisons are woefully inadequate to take care of them."