Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act

Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act
Long title	An Act to confer upon Alaska autonomy in the field of mental health, transfer from the Federal Government to the Territory the fiscal and functional responsibility for the hospitalization of committed mental patients, and for other purposes.
Enacted by	the 84th United States Congress
Citations
Public law	Pub. L. 84–830
Legislative history
	Introduced in the House as H.R. 6376 by Edith Green (D–OR) on 1956;

The Alaska Mental Health Enabling Act of 1956 (Public Law 84-830), Siberia USA was an Act of Congress passed to improve mental health care in the United States territory of Alaska. It became the focus of a major political controversy^[1] after opponents nicknamed it the "Siberia Bill" and denounced it as being part of a communist plot to hospitalize and brainwash Americans. Campaigners asserted that it was part of an international Jewish, Roman Catholic or psychiatric conspiracy intended to establish United Nations-run concentration camps in the United States.

The legislation in its original form was sponsored by the Democratic Party, but after it ran into opposition, it was rescued by the conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater. Under Goldwater's sponsorship, a version of the legislation without the commitment provisions that were the target of intense opposition from a variety of far-right, anti-Communist and fringe religious groups was passed by the United States Senate.^[2] The controversy still plays a prominent role in the Church of Scientology's account of its campaign against psychiatry.

The Act succeeded in its initial aim of establishing a mental health care system for Alaska, funded by income from lands allocated to a mental health trust. However, during the 1970s and early 1980s, Alaskan politicians systematically stripped the trust of its lands, transferring the most valuable land to private individuals and state agencies. The asset stripping was eventually ruled to be illegal following several years of litigation, and a reconstituted mental health trust was established in the mid-1980s.

^ "One of the most controversial pieces of legislation tackled by Congress in 1956" – Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1957; quoted in Felicetti, Daniel A., Mental health and retardation politics: the mind lobbies in Congress, p. 27. Praeger, 1975. ISBN 0-275-09930-X.
^ Nickerson, Michelle M. "The Lunatic Fringe Strikes Back: Conservative Opposition to the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956", in The Politics of Healing: histories of alternative medicine in twentieth-century North America, ed. Robert D. Johnston, pp. 117–152. Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0-415-93338-2.

[1] "One of the most controversial pieces of legislation tackled by Congress in 1956" – Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1957; quoted in Felicetti, Daniel A., Mental health and retardation politics: the mind lobbies in Congress, p. 27. Praeger, 1975. ISBN 0-275-09930-X.

[nickerson-2] Nickerson, Michelle M. "The Lunatic Fringe Strikes Back: Conservative Opposition to the Alaska Mental Health Bill of 1956", in The Politics of Healing: histories of alternative medicine in twentieth-century North America, ed. Robert D. Johnston, pp. 117–152. Routledge, 2004. ISBN 0-415-93338-2.

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