Professionals’ perceptions of the Saskatoon Mental Health Strategy (MHS) Court: a qualitative analysis

Abstract

The Saskatoon Mental Health Strategy (MHS) aims to improve supervision for justice-involved individuals with mental illness and cognitive impairments. Given the limited research on certain aspects of mental health courts, the current study seeks to add to this growing body of literature by exploring professionals’ perceptions of the Saskatoon MHS Court. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of nine professionals involved in the Saskatoon MHS Court, and results were divided into three main themes (balancing priorities and viewpoints, resources, and connections) with corresponding subthemes. Despite challenges, professionals thought that the Court was meeting its goals by treating the underlying causes of offending behaviour rather than simply criminalizing the behaviours. Suggestions for improving the overall effectiveness and functioning of the Court are discussed.

Keywords:

• Metal Health Court
• therapeutic court
• therapeutic jurisprudence
• professional perceptions
• diversion court

Ethical standards

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Alexandra Zidenberg has declared no conflicts of interest.

Lisa Jewell has declared no conflicts of interest.

Krista Mathias has declared no conflicts of interest.

Glen Luther has declared no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee (the University of Saskatchewan Behavioural Research Ethics Board [ID 14-290]) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

No funding was provided for this research. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, AMZ, upon reasonable request.