National Mental Health Conference Co-Sponsored by Capital University Law School Heralds Success of Ohio’s Collaborative Approach

COLUMBUS – At a national conference in Columbus this week, a spirit of collaboration among the legal community, the criminal justice system and mental health professionals was cited as the reason why Ohio leads the country in reforms regarding the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

The First National Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) Conference in conjunction with the Third National Conference on Mental Illness and the Criminal Justice System was sponsored by Capital University Law School, the Supreme Court of Ohio, the Ohio Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence and the Ohio Chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. The event took place Wednesday, May 11, and Thursday, May 12, at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

Mental health and criminal justice professionals from 20 different states acted as presenters at conference workshops and panels, which covered a range of topics, including how to establish an effective and successful crisis intervention team, how to diagnosis and provide basic treatment of mental illness and how to find grants and other funding for mental health courts.

Ohio has more mental health courts and court diversion programs than any other state and also leads the nation in its number of crisis intervention teams.

“This national conference provided a unique forum for professionals from law enforcement agencies and mental health advocacy organizations from across North America to meet and share their experiences and ideas,” said Capital University Law School Dean Jack A. Guttenberg. “We were pleased to welcome more than 700 participants from across the country and Canada to facilitate discussions and bring communities together to find solutions to this issue.”

“The organizations that have joined together to sponsor this conference and the participants that have traveled to Columbus to attend it are not just participating in a two-day event but also have joined together in all sorts of education, training and local efforts to implement reforms on behalf of the mentally ill in the criminal justice system,” said Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton of the Supreme Court of Ohio. “They have partnered with us every step of the way.”

The first day of the conference focused on crisis intervention teams, which are groups of police officers who have been specially trained to work with the mentally ill. The second day focused on mental illness and the criminal justice system with continued discussion of crisis intervention teams.

“Crisis intervention teams go hand-in-hand with mental health courts, and nationally CIT training is spreading like wildfire,” said retired Lieutenant Michael S. Woody, CIT specialist for the State of Ohio and law enforcement liaison for the Ohio Criminal Justice Coordinating Center of Excellence.

Woody noted that roughly 10 percent of calls that officers respond to involve someone in crisis, and when the officers involved in those situations have received CIT training injuries both to themselves and to others decrease significantly.

Frederick J. Frese, Ph.D., a noted psychologist with a history of schizophrenia gave the keynote presentation on the first day of the joint conference and discussed the progress that has been made in working with the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

“I am exceedingly proud that we in Ohio are taking the lead in crisis intervention teams and mental health court development,” said Frese, who called it “an unbelievable honor” to be introduced by Justice Stratton. “This conference today is demonstrably showing that we are beginning to address [past] mistakes.”

Justice Stratton is nationally known for her leadership role in promoting creative and effective alternatives to incarceration for individuals with mental illness, and for her work as an advocate for better services and more humane treatment for people with mental illnesses. In 2001, she established the Supreme Court of Ohio Advisory Committee on Mentally Ill in the Courts, the first such Supreme Court committee in the country. The Advisory Committee, which includes mental health, legal and criminal justice professionals, works to establish task forces in each county to bring local representatives together to collaborate on issues relating to the mentally ill in the criminal justice system. Also in 2001, the Supreme Court created an office designed to assist and support local courts in developing specialized programs uniquely tailored to helping specific populations within the court system.

“Ohio is nationally known for significantly reducing the criminalization of the mentally ill through the use of crisis intervention teams, mental health courts and other jail diversification programs,” said Terry Russell, executive director of the Ohio Chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. “The state leadership that Justice Stratton has provided in these efforts has been irreplaceable.”

Domingo S. Herraiz, director of the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance, and Michael F. Hogan, Ph.D., director of the Ohio Department of Mental Health and former chair of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, spoke on the concluding day of the conference.