Fund mental health in community first

The planned Illinois Department of Corrections treatment units at Elgin Mental Health Center are definitely needed and will treat a serious symptom, but not the causes, of the problem.

A major reason that the state has so many people with serious mental illnesses in its prison system is the state's increasing failure to adequately fund mental health services in the community. When community mental-health treatment is unavailable, jails and prisons become the homes of people who cannot function adequately in the community without psychotropic medication, other treatments and recovery services.

State funding for Illinois' community mental health centers has been declining for approximately the last nine years. That funding took an extreme nose dive in July, 2015 when the state eliminated psychiatry grants to community mental health centers and failed to pay the money it owed the centers for over a year. As a result, many people were and remain unable to receive needed medical treatment.

Unfortunately, this lack of medications and services that reduce symptoms causes some people to act inappropriately in the community and/or turn to illegal drugs as poor substitutes for the psychotropic medications. This, in turn, leads to arrests and incarcerations.

Maintaining people with mental illnesses in prisons is far more expensive than treating them in the community. The planned IDOC treatment units at EMHC are definitely needed and will treat a serious symptom of the problem, but the problem itself is better addressed with adequate community mental health care in the first place.

Karen Beyer, Executive Director

Ecker Center for Mental Health, Elgin