Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Diane M. Strickland brought two perspectives as one of eight members of the commission that investigated the Virginia Tech massacre, those of a Southwest Virginia resident and of a Virginia judge and lawyer.

Strickland, a retired Roanoke circuit judge and a mediator for The McCammon Group, said she found the commission’s work “very demanding, both emotionally and timewise.”

She said she learned a lot from the experience, expanding her knowledge in areas with which she thought she was already familiar. She came away with the firm conviction that the state’s mental health system “needs fixing. There are some very, very serious gaps in services,” she said.

Strickland hesitated to put a priority on which of those gaps is most in need of filling. The commission on mental health reform appointed by Chief Justice Leroy Rountree Hassell Sr. is taking a 0 view of the system and will be in a better position to judge where money could best be spent, she said.

She noted that much of her prior experience with the mental health system had been in her role as a circuit judge conducting the mandatory periodic review of patients at Catawba Hospital. Those proceedings and appeals from involuntary commitments left her with concerns about shortages of crisis stabilization units and hospital beds for psychiatric patients.

Her focus during the Tech commission’s work was on the commitment process, an analysis that she said illustrated the system’s inability to monitor and treat those for whom involuntary outpatient treatment might be appropriate.

With the General Assembly confronting a budget shortfall, a full restructuring of the system is unlikely, she acknowledged. The need to weigh the services that could be provided with the money available is “why we are where we are” on mental health, she said.

Earlier, Strickland had been co-chairman of a committee that examined the commitment process for the Boyd-Graves Conference. She will become chairman of the conference at the end of the month.

She retired five years ago after 15 years as a general district and circuit judge. While on the bench, she presided over the first drug court and the first youth court in the state.
“I very much miss being involved with drugs courts,” although “I love mediation,” she said of her work with the McCammon Group.

She added that her service on the Tech commission and with the Boyd-Graves Conference are examples of “the many, many opportunities that I’ve had that I would be hard-pressed to take advantage of if I were still sitting full time.”

Biography

Education: A.B., University of North Carolina, 1969; J.D., University of Virginia law school, 1973.

Achievement: Member of the commission that investigated the shooting deaths of 33 persons at Virginia Tech on April 16.

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