Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act
The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the “Siberia Bill” and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater.
About Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act in brief
The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy after opponents nicknamed it the “Siberia Bill” and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater’s sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right and anti-Communist was passed by the U.S. Senate. The controversy still plays a prominent role in the Church of Scientology’s account of its campaign against psychiatry. Alaska possessed no mental health treatment facilities prior to the passage of the 1956 Act. The treatment of the mentally ill was governed by an agreement with the state of Oregon dating back to the turn of the 20th century. In 1904, a contract was signed with Morningside Hospital, privately owned and operated by Henry Waldo Coe in Portland, Oregon, under which Alaskan mental patients would be sent to the hospital for treatment. By the 1940s it was recognized that this arrangement was unsatisfactory. The American Medical Association conducted a series of studies in 1948, followed by a Department of the Interior study in 1950. The studies recommended a comprehensive overhaul of the system, with the development of an in-territory mental health program for Alaska.
This proposal was widely supported by the public and politicians. At the start of 1956, in the second session of the 84th Congress, Representative Edith Green introduced the Alaska mental Health Bill in the House of Representatives. The bill provided for a cash grant of USD 12. 5 million to be disbursed to the Alaska government in a number of phases, to fund the construction of mental health facilities in the territory. In addition, the bill granted the Governor of Alaska the authority to enter into reciprocal agreements with the governors of other states. In the 1950s, the U S. Congress enacted a law permitting the government of the then District of Alaska to providemental health care for Alaskans. The Act succeeded in its initial aim of establishing a mental health system for Alaska, funded by income from lands allocated to amental health trust. However, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Alasken politicians systematically stripped the trust of its lands, transferring the most valuable land to private individuals and state agencies. The asset stripping was eventually ruled to be illegal following several years of litigation, and a reconstituted mental health trust was established in the mid-1980s. The trust would then be able to use the assets to obtain an ongoing revenue stream to fund an ongoingmental health program. The law would then grant the state a grant-in-aid—the federal government owned about 99% of the land of Alaska at the time.
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This page is based on the article Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
