Editor’s Note: Participants in the mental health court are identified only by their first names because of confidentiality issues in their diagnoses.

AUGUSTA – Since being admitted 14 months ago to the state’s first mental health court, Floyd has done many things he could not have done otherwise. He has re-established a relationship with his daughter, tended to his 84-year-old mother, buried his brother and continued to live with his wife.

Those activities are not out of the ordinary for the average Mainer approaching 60. Yet without the help and services to which Floyd and his family have had access through the fledgling court program, he would have spent the past year in the Kennebec County Jail or the Maine State Prison.

Instead, Floyd, looking uncomfortable in a white dress shirt and powder blue tie, on Friday became one of the first graduates of what is officially known as the co-occurring disorders court. James, a bald man in his late 30s, graduated alongside Floyd at a ceremony held at the Kennebec County Courthouse. After a year with the program, James began attending classes this fall at the University of Maine at Augusta, working toward a degree in business.

Both men declined to be photographed or interviewed, but each beamed with pride as Maine Superior Court Justice Nancy Mills, who heads the specialty court, handed them a graduation certificate and an oversized key engraved with the date and each man’s name.

“This is to let you know that you continue to hold the key to your success,” Mills told Floyd and James as she gave them their diplomas and keys.

More than 50 people, including attorneys, judges, legislators, mental health workers, jail personnel and caseworkers from the Department of Human Services, attended the event along with many of the 17 people still sentenced to the mental health court.

The co-occurring disorders court began operating in July 2005 in Kennebec County Superior Court with the judge, prosecutor, case manager, crisis counselor and others volunteering their time to get the experimental court off the ground. Last September, it was awarded a $450,000 three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Co-occurring disorders is a term used by mental health providers to describe a person who has both an alcohol or drug problem and a psychiatric problem. To recover fully, the person needs treatment for both.

Similar to the adult drug courts operating around the state, the mental health court offers offenders an alternative to incarceration. Instead of sentencing a defendant to jail or prison time, the judge sentences an offender to the court’s supervision for one to two years in exchange for a guilty plea.

In turn, the defendant agrees to undergo a rigorous treatment schedule and appear once a week before the judge. Even participants who are successful in the program will be on probation or administrative release after graduation.

Evert Fowle, district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties, began his career as a prosecutor in 1985, he said at Friday’s graduation. That was when the deinstitutionalization of state mental hospitals was beginning. Over the past decade, more and more of the state’s mentally ill have been reinstitutionalized in Maine’s county jails. One of the goals of the court is to reduce the number of mentally ill inmates incarcerated throughout the state.

Anyone can refer a defendant to the special court, Mills said, including a defendant, his or her attorney, family members, the arresting officers and the prosecutor. The first step after an arrest is to refer the individual to Crisis & Counseling Services Inc. in Augusta for evaluation and diagnosis.

Once a confidential report is received by the team, which includes Mills, Fowle, the defendant’s attorney and a pretrial service case manager, a joint decision is made about whether the individual would be a good candidate for the court.

So far, only one person has “flunked out” of the court. He was sentenced to six years in prison with all bur four years suspended, Fowle said.

Most of those admitted to the court are facing felonies, Mills said Friday. Their crimes include drug possession, assault, robbery, burglary, terrorizing, gross sexual assault, assaulting an officer and criminal operating under the influence of intoxicants.

“Mental illness and substance abuse are diseases, just like cancer and diabetes,” the judge said. “People who suffer from them need help, understanding, resources, treatment and, in some cases, medicine. If they have those things, there’s a good chance they’ll recover.”

One of the keys to the program, she said, is intensive case management and an ability to contact someone 24 hours a day. The co-occurring disorders court offers participants that and connects them with services from counseling to medication management to housing.

“Even with the backing of the court, it has been difficult for some people to get the services they need and are entitled to,” Mills said.

Fowle said that the caseworkers have been diligent, persistent and simply “refused to take no for an answer.”

Although the team approach used by the new court contributed to the success of Friday’s graduates, Floyd and James deserve most of the credit for their own accomplishments, the district attorney said after the ceremony.

“The court offered them the opportunity to climb out of the abyss and they seized it,” Fowle said.