Welcome to the Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee (MHLAC)

For 35 years, children and adults with mental disabilities have looked to MHLAC for vindication of their rights against discrimination and to appropriate services. An independent state agency of the Supreme Judicial Court, MHLAC provides advice and direct legal representation on a wide range of legal issues. These include: access to services, treatment rights, equitable treatment in custody and visitation matters, guardianship abuse, insurance discrimination, educational rights, housing bias, and mistreatment in institutional and community settings. In addition to providing direct legal representation and advice, MHLAC lawyers also train judges, attorneys, and advocates; interpret and analyze legislation; and produce brochures and longer publications on pertinent legal matters.

This website is intended to inform individuals and families about the work of MHLAC, including special projects devoted to children confined in DYS facilities and to protecting parents’ rights to fair treatment in custody and visitation actions (the Clubhouse Family Legal Support Project). This site is also intended to be a resource to advocates, lawyers, mental health professionals and others interested in assisting individuals with mental disabilities to assert their rights and advocate for themselves.

Specifically, our online library lists publications and legal resources for many subject areas under headings according to each topic.  If you are looking for support other than legal, our flyer called, “Are you Looking for Support?” may be very useful.

MHLAC welcomes your comments, questions and suggestions about our site via email mhlac@mhlac.org.

Important News and Information

• People with a Mental Health Diagnosis or Lived-experience We are looking for reports of you being denied care for physical problems because of your mental health history!

  Have you ever experienced medical symptoms that were not taken seriously because the doctor knew about your psychiatric history? Were you denied care for a physical problem because staff told you “it was all in your head”? If so, please let MHLAC know so that we can learn more about the misuse of psychiatric records and advocate for consumer control of records.

Please email us at: ListenToMe@mhlac.org. Please give as full a description as possible of what happened. We keep identifying information confidential unless you specifically say that we may use it in our efforts. If you do not want MHLAC to know your name, you can mail your account to us at:

Miriam Ruttenberg
Mental Health Legal Advisors Committee
24 School Street 8th Floor, Boston, MA 02108; or
fax from a public location to MHLAC at (617) 338-2347

• REGISTER NOW for MHLAC's next conference to be held Friday, June 7, 2013 at MCLE, Boston, MA.

• NEW! MHLAC White Paper on Electronic Health Records. Integration of behavioral and physical health care is popular and so is the integration of electronic health records. But research shows that physicians recommend different treatment and are more likely to misdiagnose patients for whom they have access to records revealing a psychiatric history. The white paper supports the need for persons with psychiatric histories to control who can have access to their mental health information.

• NOW AVAILABLE: From MHLAC's conference held Friday, February 1, 2013, here are the slide presentations by presenters Robert Whitaker and Dr. Daniel Fisher. (Click on the presenter's name to view and/or download the .pdf file)

• MHLAC is Regional Coordinator for CPCS's mental health attorneys in Suffolk and Norfolk Counties through a contract with CPCS's Mental Health Litigation Division. Please contact Kate Dulit (kdulit@mhlac.org) with questions about training under the terms of the contract and Miriam Ruttenberg (mruttenberg@mhlac.org) with all other questions.