Alaska’s Locked Rooms Need a New Safety Net

In Alaska, two state agencies—Health and Family Services—have the power to check on psychiatric hospitals every year. They can also investigate complaints from patients or their families. This setup sounds like a promise to protect people who are sick with mental illness. The law also says that patients can file grievances inside their own facility. But the two agencies must keep an eye on whether those complaints are handled fairly. They do that by inspecting hospitals and holding the licenses for them. A problem appears in a specific part of the law. It lets the agencies give their enforcement powers to the managers who run the locked rooms themselves. In other words, the people running the houses are also in charge of making sure patients’ rights are respected.Because of this, there is no separate state check to confirm that the grievance law is followed. There is also no outside review of rules about who can provide personal care to patients, or of the eleven basic rights that every psychiatric patient should have. The federal government and private certification groups do not step in to enforce these state rules either. When patients’ rights are ignored, their chances of getting better can drop. My own experience in locked units—more than seven months—showed how common it is for patients to suffer unnecessary harm or have their rights denied. Even though the state calls them people with disabilities, they often do not receive proper protection. Until lawmakers change that part of the law and require state agencies to enforce all patient‑rights rules, locked psychiatric facilities will keep letting patients be mistreated. It is time for Alaska to close this loophole and put real oversight in place.