Courts, community lead efforts on mental health

Since the month of May was established as Mental Health Awareness Month in 1949, advocates across the country have led its observance and spread the word that few issues impact individuals, communities, and systems quite like mental health.

Millions of people across the country are affected by mental health concerns each year, and nowhere is this more evident than within our courts and justice system.

Commonly cited research estimates 70% of individuals involved in the criminal justice system have a mental health disorder, with 17% of adults (31% of women; 15% of men) living with a Serious Mental Illnesses (SMI).

Furthermore, 72% of incarcerated adults with SMI also have a co-occurring substance use disorder. This unfortunate reality requires courts to serve as a significant referral source to community mental health treatment systems, and often places jails in a tenuous position as de facto mental health institutions.

Fortunately, courts and justice partners are in a unique position to move beyond advocacy by bringing communities together to communicate, develop, and support responses to address public health and safety issues that often emanate from undertreated or untreated mental health disorders.

There is no such thing as good racism

Refugee camps are temporary solutions that quickly and almost inevitably become huge longterm problems unless those displaced people find permanent homes and can get on with their lives.

Gaza has essentially been a refugee camp since 1948 — which is a problem the Palestinians’ supposed allies in the region have not done much to help solve.

Palestinian terrorists attacked Israel and kidnapped some its citizens with the clear intention of provoking a violent response, of starting war. But, waging a conventional war (e.g. bombing suspected “military” targets) against terrorists tends to be a bad idea. Terrorists want lots of civilian casualties and don’t much care whether those casualties are Palestinian or Israeli.

Unless it can be conclusively shown that Palestinian terrorists were culpable for that specific incident, almost every Palestinian civilian casualty generates sympathy for the Palestinians and recruits for the terrorists.

Because publicity given the horrors of the war in Gaza tends to generate sympathy for the Palestinians and seems to hurt Israel, the Israelis have been tempted to try to control the press. But that’s almost certainly a mistake. The truth is one of the greatest weapons democracies have against tyranny and terrorism.

Many seem to think the solution to the present crisis must include the creation of a Palestinian state —

I am proud to bring to your attention the Illinois Courts’ Mental Health Action Plan, which was approved by our Illinois Supreme Court in November of 2023.

The Mental Health Action Plan is built on the premise that no one agency or institution can address the overrepresentation of justice-involved individuals with mental health needs, so we all must work together.

Although some of the Mental Health Action Plan recommendations are directly within the control and purview of the courts other recommendations are driven by systems whose resources or actions may have a direct impact on the justice system and justice-involved individuals.

Thus, the theme of the Mental Health Action Plan supports a multi-disciplinary and cross-systems approach to improving the court and community response to individuals with mental health needs.

This Mental Health Awareness Month I urge you to learn how your court and community are leading efforts to improve the intersection between mental health and justice.

To learn more about how the Illinois Courts are leading Change, visit illinoiscourts.gov/courts/supremecourt/committees-and-commissions/mental-healthleading-change.

Kathryn Zenoff Guest columnist

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

bordering on the Jewish state of Israel, surrounded by various Islamic states. And that may indeed be part of the least bad solution.

But the idea that each and every religious sect, each linguistic and/or ethnic group should have its own country is extremely problematic. Few countries are religiously and/or ethnically homogenous .And, frankly, no state should be. Ethnic cleansing is an abomination that should be discouraged, not encouraged.

For one thing, some Palestinians are Christian. Sunni and Shia are the best known antagonistic factions in the Muslim world, but there are many others. Differences between various Jewish sects are a source of tension in Israel. The Troubles was a war between Irish Catholics and Protestants.

One of Putin’s excuses for invading Ukraine was that there are ethnic Russians living there. Wars and refugee crises in Africa and southeast Asia usually have an ethnic or tribal component. And many of the illegal and legal immigrants so resented here in the U.S. fled conflicts, drug cartels and/or rampant crime in their native lands.

All too often, preserving one’s cultural heritage or the minutia of a sect’s religious beliefs is used as an excuse to kill one’s neighbors.

So I repeat, there’s no such thing as good racism. Everyone’s cultural heritage is a choice. And for example, you don’t have to be Indian to identify with the teachings of yoga.