LETTER: Alaska psychiatric patients face longstanding mistreatment
Published 3:30 am Wednesday, June 24, 2026
Psychiatric patients at the state-run Alaska Psychiatric Institute are facing mistreatment because the only ones that help patients fill out the grievance forms are hospital employees and there is no reasonable access to the impartial body to bring their grievance to.
In 1992, psychiatric patients were given a right by state law AS47.30.847 to have assistance from a trained patient advocate to assist with their grievance. That is not happening because there is no regulations of what the advocate’s training consists of. And the advocate is not available to patients a reasonable amount of time each day, especially during holidays and weekends.
By the same law, patients were also given a right to bring their grievance to an impartial body. Patients were given that right 34 years ago. On July 30, 2024, at an API Governing Board meeting, chair Elizabeth King “recommended a panel consisting of the Chair, Secretary and the CEO to be the final arbitrators for patient complaints/grievances as a short-term solution. A long-term solution will need further exploration.” At the same meeting, the Department of Health Commissioner Kim Koval suggested that she was looking at a special review team — a mini-ombudsman office might be a solution to bring in neutrality to the process of patients bringing a grievance to an impartial body.
This is why psychiatric patients are being mistreated. The state, API has had over three decades to follow the legislative direction in AS47.30.847 and create a truly impartial body to review psychiatric patient complaints in a reasonably short period of time. The state has not done it. API has not done it. And patients are being mistreated, because the denial of rights is mistreatment.
Having the CEO or API board members or hospital staff acting as the impartial body is completely unacceptable because they are not impartial. In a 2011 report by the Disability Law Center, it was stated that patients were waiting months to get their complaints/grievances reviewed by higher ups at API.
There must truly be an impartial body to review complaints/grievances, and it should not take another 30 or 40 years to set it up.
Faith J. Myers is the author of the book, “Going Crazy in Alaska,” and has spent over 7 months in locked psychiatric facilities and units in Alaska.
