Part Two

Mental Illness Workshop

Student’s Name

Institutional Affiliation

Introduction

Most of the inmates in the United States correction facilities have mental health issues especially at Cook County Jail in Chicago. In the U.S., many people with psychological disorders end up in jail rather than getting the medical attention that will assist them to improve their condition. American policies do not address the issue of mental illness in correction facilities adequately. This paper will discuss on how to prepare a mental illness workshop for County Cook Jail wardens to assist them to manage and help inmates to improve their mental health through counseling and other corrective programs.

County Cook Jail

The mental illness will be conducted to enlighten the wardens at the Cook County Jail in Chicago to enable them to manage and offer support to mentally ill petty offenders who should be out of jail. The County Cook Jail, Chicago is known as one of the correctional facilities with the highest number of mentally ill inmates (Stahl, 2017). According to Sheriff Tom Dart, the facility has become a dumping ground for mentally ill persons and he says that half of the current 7,500 inmates should not be in jail (Stahl, 2017). Majority of the inmates are petty offenders such as stealing food for survival and finding a place to sleep. According to studies, 6.4% of men and 12.2% of women of the U.S. inmates have severe mental illness, while there is less than 2% out of the general population (CCHHS, 2017).

Majority of the mentally ill inmates suffer from co-concurring substance disorder. In addition, some inmates are behind bars for self-medication due to the government failure to provide the required mental health care. Currently, the facility has implemented mental health program which includes group therapy and doctor’s visit. However, the officers do not have adequate skills to manage and address mentally ill inmates. Therefore, the staff at the facility should possess adequate skills to handle and manage the mentally ill inmates.

Contact Person

The person to be interviewed is the Cook County Sheriff, Thomas J. Dart from the Department of Corrections. The Cook County Department of Correction handles approximately 100,000 pre-trial detainees annually (CCDC, 2017). His department’s mission is to ensure the safety of citizens, correctional staff, and inmates. The main Correction Department’s mobile contact to reach Thomas J. Dart is (773) 674-7100. The Cook County Sheriff is determined to assist the petty offenders to get out of jail.

The Workshop Program Literature

A study was conducted to find out the effectiveness of workshop education for mental professionals in assessing and managing suicide risk by the American Association of Sociology (Pisani et al, 2011). The study found out that workshop education assists in maximizing mentally ill patient’s outcome. The mental health professionals will assist the correctional officers to understand the objective of the initiative is to assist the inmates to recover from their mental conditions. According to Pisani et al(2011), workshops are effective in transferring knowledge, however, their role in improving clinical care of mentally ill individuals is yet to be determined. Therefore, the correctional officers at Cook County Jail will gain important skills that will enable them to maximize the mentally ill inmates’ outcome. Mental health professionals have an ethical and practical responsibility to develop and maintain competence in their area (Pisani et al, 2011).

From the 12 educational workshops conducted to assist mental health professionals to assess and reduce suicide cases, all of them provided positive results. This shows that training the correctional officers at the Cook County Jail will improve the inmates’ mental health outcome (Pisani et al, 2011). According to the Cook County Sherriff, the majority of the inmates are petty offenders who can be assisted to get out of the jail. The Sherriff regular mingles with men in the minimum-security division trying to obtain some information such as the reason why they were arrested (Stahl, 2017). He argues that most of the inmates in the minimum-security division do not pose any danger to the public (Stahl, 2017). Therefore, the facility can assist the inmates to manage their mental health condition by empowering the correctional officers with the necessary skills. The workshop is intended to provide the correctional officers with necessary skills to improve behavioral health services at the facility (Pisani et al, 2011). Therefore, the proposed budget will include the trainers’ fees, learning materials, and administration costs among other expenses (Pisani et al, 2011).

The training program will be divided into four sessions namely; introduction, correctional counseling, and clinical theory. The introduction session will assist the officers to understand the meaning of mental health and how to approach and interact with inmates with mental disorders. During the introduction to mental health session, officers will be equipped with necessary skills to identify individuals with mental disorders and monitoring their condition. The correctional officers will be able to identify different mental disorders such as substance abuse, schizophrenia, and depression among others (Pisani et al, 2011). Each mental disorder has different traits that can assist the officers to identify and offer the required support. The correctional officers will receive the introduction session during the first period of the workshop to provide the basis for the entire training.

After the introduction, the officers will receive training on how to offer correctional counseling to individual inmates with mental disorders. The training session will aim at empowering officers with necessary skills to enable them to offer personalized support to mentally ill inmates (CCHHS, 2017). The correctional counseling session will provide skills to offices on how to handle physical aggression, anger, and lack of proper communication from affected inmates. The correctional counseling will handle topics such as stigma busting and providing support to the inmates with mental disorders. Finally, the last training session is the clinical theory. This session will assist the officers to understand the psychological distress to assist in promoting personal improvement (Pisani et al, 2011). The clinical theory will provide knowledge on how to prevent and relieve psychological problems.

The Benefits of the Program

The training program will equip the correctional officers with the necessary skills that will enable them to handle and manage inmates suffering from mental disorders. In addition, the program will reduce the number of inmates and enable them to live a normal life. Finally, the programs will improve the mental health of the inmates even after being released from the prison because of the skills received on how to handle their condition.

Conclusion

The program will assist the Cook County Jail to reduce the number of mentally ill inmates through training the correctional officers on how to handle and manage mental disorders among the inmates. In addition, the facility will be able to reduce the number of petty offenders who commit crime due to their mental illnesses. Finally, the facility will be able to improve the mental health outcome of the inmates and even after they are released from the facility.

Reference

CCDC. (2017, October 1). Cook County Department of Corrections. Retrieved from Cook County Sheriff: http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/doc/doc_main.html

CCHHS. (2017). Cook County Tackles Mental Illness in Community and Jail. County Cook Health $ Health System, 1-2. Retrieved from http://www.cookcountyhhs.org/press-releases/cook-county-tackles-mental-illness-in-community-and-jail/

Pisani, A. R. (2011). The Assessment and Management of Suicide. The American Association of Suicidology, 255-276.

Stahl, L. (2017). Half of the Inmates shouldn’t be here, says Cook County sheriff. CBC News, 1-2. Retrieved from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-the-inmates-shouldnt-be-here-says-cook-county-sheriff-2/