Mental illness in jail costs us all: What's Clark Co. doing about it?
Springfield News-SunMar 09, 2019
According to statistics provided by the Stepping Up Initiative, there are about 2 million people with mental illness who are arrested annually across the country.
But on a smaller scale, about three out of 10 inmates in the
It's an issue that costs everyone.
"They've been homeless, they've been through emergency rooms, they've been through shelters, food pantries -- lots of costs to the system and it cycles over and over with very poor outcomes," said Stepping Up Ohio Director
A kickoff meeting of close to 60 Clark County community members was held on Friday to address the issue. Attendees ran the gamut from local government officials, judges, treatment providers and city and county law enforcement.
Lundberg said all county jails in
There are resources like a psychiatrist and a therapist in the jail, provided through
Stepping Up seeks to provide counties with tools and strategies that lead to the measurable reduction of the number of people in jail with mental illness.
Lundberg said a lot of those tools are absolutely free and are just underutilized.
She was impressed by the turnout and collaboration at Friday's meeting, but
"There's a lot of work that can be done with identifying persons when they come into a jail, connecting them with services (like housing or treatment), connecting with the same medications they had when they come in," she said.
During the meeting, she mentioned several other resources like the
She said the issue is about dollars and cents -- but it's also about human compassion and just taking care of someone who may be struggling.
"Everybody wants to have value in their lives. They want to have a house," she said. "They want to have meaning in their existence. And if they're controlled by a mental illness, you don't even know where to start to get that relief."
Dr.
"It didn't take long when individuals came forward within the last year saying we need to do this," she said.
The next steps after Friday's meeting will come at another meeting in the next few weeks.
In a process called mapping, attendees will chart out the beneficial resources in the county and start to brainstorm how to form a better interconnected web between them.
"It's the gaps where people fall through or get caught in a cycle and one system doesn't realize other systems have been already working with an individual," Mayer said.
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