Mental health is gripping this nation…and not in a favorable way.
Read online, watch or listen to any newscast and it is a good bet that you will learn of a tragedy involving at least one individual suffering from mental health issues. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of such reports. But, just as unfortunate, there is a vast shortage of mental health care.
“We must do something about the mental health crisis,” is often the cry that follows.
Despite other divisions, that statement brings broad agreement across the political spectrum.
Left or right, red state or blue state, we all agree. We must do something to solve this growing crisis.
But what?
A pilot program currently underway here in Wayne County, Michigan, can be an important part of that solution.
The program, informally known as Familiar Faces, operates through the Wayne County Probate Court System and will reach its one-year anniversary in July.
Its goal is to break the court-to-jail cycle by assuring adequate mental health care for individuals who have had multiple appearances before probate court judges – those with the “familiar faces.”
The pilot program includes 76 of these familiar faces, all of whom have had at least 10 probate court interactions.
More than half have spent time in the Wayne County Jail, including one individual who has been booked an astounding 31 times. In all, pilot program participants have accounted for 244 jail bookings. Inmates with mental health issues are frequently sent to emergency rooms for treatment then back to jail, all at the county’s expense.
To put it bluntly, the Wayne County Jail is the county’s largest mental health care treatment agency and has been so for years. That must change.
Rather than arresting, convicting and ultimately releasing these individuals over-and-over again, the program seeks to provide them with court-ordered assisted outpatient care.
Mental health professionals consider assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) as perhaps the best option in helping troubled individuals overcome mental health issues and move toward leading healthier, happier, more productive lives.
It is a program that can heal individuals with broken lives, giving them hope, rather than strand them on a perpetual path of despair and hopelessness.
Yet, to be successful, it involves commitment from many agencies, both public and private.
That is what is happening right now in Wayne County.
Through the leadership of Chief Probate Judge Freddie Burton Jr., the Behavioral Health Unit/Assisted Outpatient Treatment pilot program, as it is officially known, brings together a wide array of stakeholders.
Representatives from the court system and law enforcement are joined by mental health professionals and mental health advocacy organizations. These agencies include the Detroit-Wayne Integrated Health Network (DWIHN), a major provider of mental health and substance abuse treatment programs in Michigan’s largest county.
The pilot program also includes outreach to families of those placed into assisted outpatient treatment. It may also seek stable housing for select patients.
But the program doesn’t end there.
Hearings are scheduled at the first sign a patient might not comply with treatment requirements to determine what additional steps are necessary. Complex cases may be referred to DWIHN or another agency.
Familiar Faces fits well with the national Stepping Up Initiative program, which the Wayne County Commission has unanimously endorsed.
The Stepping Up Initiative calls for treatment, not incarceration, for those with mental health issues. I was pleased to introduce a resolution to join the Stepping Up Initiative in 2015, which proved to be the catalyst toward this pilot program, to my colleagues and especially grateful for their total support.
The Stepping Up Initiative notes that an estimated 2 million individuals with mental health issues are jailed each year and the percentage of those inmates is up to six times greater than a similarly sized portion of the public at large.
It also indicates that the cost of jailing those with mental health issues is as much as three times that of other prisoners. That means directing individuals away from jail and into mental health treatment can produce savings into the millions of dollars for Wayne County once the revolving door between jail and emergency room treatment finally closes.
No one program can solve the mental health crisis all by itself.
But the Familiar Faces program can serve an important purpose by placing individuals where they belong – in treatment instead of jail.
It can break a cycle that ruins lives and drain government finances and replace it with one a system that offers hope.
More important, it can serve as a model for others in our state and nation to replicate.
Alisha Bell (D-Detroit) is chair of the Wayne County Commission.
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