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 Intensive Behavioral Center.
To request assistance with issues related to:
- Board of Visitors responsibilities and authority for site inspections and public mental health services,
- Full-time legal counsel at the Montana State Hospital, contact Craig Fitch.
- Advocacy at Montana State Hospital, contact Vera Haffey.
- Intensive Behavioral Center, Boulder, MT (previously Montana Developmental Center), contact Jeremy Hoscheid at 406-444-5278.
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.
Board of Visitors Grievance Form
Treatment-Related Rights in Montana Law
The Mental Disabilities Board of Visitors helps people who believe 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
- The World Health Organization - Mental Health, Human Rights and Legislation to Protect the Rights of People with Mental Disorders
Intensive Behavioral 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