(June 25, 2015) Last year in Chicago, approximately 22,000 mental health-related 911 calls were made. But some of the police districts in Illinois where the most mental health calls come from are also the districts with the fewest mental health services (“Mental health 911: Areas with most calls have fewest services,” WBEZ, June 12).
When someone is released from Cook County Jail, the largest single site jail in the country, they are given the phone number to a mental health hotline run by the jail and told to call anytime, according to WBEZ.
The hope is to break the cycle of jail recidivism, said Dr. Dena Williams, director of behavioral health at Cook County Jail. The logic goes that if a former inmate with mental illness can call and get help accessing treatment, they will be less likely to reenter the corrections system.
But hotline staff cannot get callers into psychiatric services immediately. There are waiting lists, sometimes upwards of six months
“The length of time it takes someone to receive medication is sometimes so long that they are unable to wait and they will end up right back in our custody,” Williams said. “It keeps me up at night because jail is not a place to be receiving treatment.”
In addition to the issue of waiting lists, there is another big hole in the mental health safety net: the location of services.
Sergeant Lori Cooper, with the Chicago Police Department, notes that sometimes officers respond to calls in areas where there is high demand for mental health services, but little supply. As a result, they are stuck with fewer nearby services where they can send people and are forced to ask them to travel long distances for mental health care.
“[It] is kind of like putting them in a wheelchair with flat tires,” Cooper said.
Illinois received high grades for its mental health commitment laws in a recent Treatment Advocacy Center report. However, the state received a “D” for its use of the laws.
Moreover, with only 11.1 public psychiatric beds per 100,000 people, Illinois fails to meet the standard of 50 beds considered necessary to provide minimally adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
Illinois needs to do a better job ensuring that local officials use the laws when appropriate, and that mental health professionals are aware of who meets the standard. In areas where services are low, using outpatient laws becomes even more important.
Read the Treatment Advocacy Center report “Mental Health Commitment Laws: A Survey of the States” to learn more.
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