Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors
How to Request Assistance
The Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors is available to help people who receive services from mental health facilities or from the Montana Developmental Center.
To request assistance with issues related to
- public mental health services, contact Gene Haire.
- the Montana Developmental Center, contact Colleen Nichols.
Informal Help
The most common kind of assistance the Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors provides is to help people resolve complaints against or disagreements and problems communicating with mental health providers.
Formal Grievances
The Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors also helps consumers to work through formal grievances with mental health providers. This kind of assistance can include attending grievance hearings with consumers and helping consumers explain their complaints to mental health providers.
Treatment-Related Rights in Montana Law
The Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors helps people who feel that their treatment rights have been violated.
Mental Health
- Civil and Legal Rights of persons involuntarily committed for mental health treatment
- Rights of persons admitted to a mental health facility
- Right not to be fingerprinted in a mental health facility
- Rights concerning photographs
- Right to be free from unnecessary or excessive medication
- Right to be free from physical restraint and isolation
- Right not to be subjected to experimental research
- Right not to be subjected to hazardous treatment
- United Nations Principles for The Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and the Improvement of Mental Health Care
Montana Developmental Center
- Rights while residing in Montana Developmental Center
- Right not to be fingerprinted
- Rights concerning photographs
- Right to be free from unnecessary or excessive medication
- Rights regarding unusual or hazardous treatment procedures, restraint, seclusion, and aversive behavior modification programs
- Right not to be subjected to experimental treatment
- Right to habilitation
