The news media often focuses on tragic and violent events involving people with mental

illnesses and despite the fact that these events are relatively rare it has resulted in us the
general public having an exaggerated perspective of the relationship between mental illness
and violence. Its also resulted in us having an exaggerated perspective on the risk of being
personally harmed by a person who has a mental illness and so tonight Id like to take a few
minutes to provide some clarity about the reality for people with mental illness who become
involved with the criminal justice system. So, lets start for a minute by talking about what
were really talking about here and first foremost were talking about people. Were not talking
about illnesses and disabilities were not talking about crimes and criminals. Were not talking
about patients or clients or convicts are inmates or offenders or consumers are survivors or
any other label that you can think of. Were talking about people and some people get sick. In
Canada one in five people will experience a mental illness during their lifetime. Thats twenty
percent of the population and that means that most if not all of us know someone a family
member, a friend, a co-worker who experiences mental health problems.

Some of these people who have a mental illness become involved with the criminal justice
system but not all of them have committed a crime. Theres a study that was a done in a
Canadian city a number of years ago and they were looking at police contact with people with
mental health problems and one of the things that they found is that forty percent of police
contact with people with mental illnesses was for non-criminal behavior, so that would include
say an individual whos walking through a shopping district perhaps acting unusually or
bizarrely the people around them are concerned or uncomfortable and so they contact the
police. The police may come and have a conversation with the person. Maybe they offer to call
someone for the person may be offered to drive the person home. This may also include
someone who is attempting suicide and so someone calls 911 and the police respond and they
worked as a de-escalate the situation and then take the person to hospital so that they can
receive care.

Many people with mental illnesses of course are arrested for criminal behaviors. Some of them
were the majority of them are for relatively minor offenses so things like shoplifting, theft,
public disturbances, vandalism, destruction property those kinds of things.

Many of them will be found criminally responsible and theyll face sentencing through the
courts. However there are people who have mental illness who do engage in violent behaviors
who ever mental illness is not a good predictor of violence and, in fact, people who have
mental illnesses are quite vulnerable and are much more likely to be victims of violence than
they are to be violent themselves, so if this is kind of a snapshot of the experience of people
with mental health problems who get involved with the criminal justice system and recovery is
possible what do people need.

Interestingly, what people need to recover from their mental help, their mental illness is
remarkably similar to what they need in order to reduce the risk of being involved with a
criminal justice system any further, so here is the list.

They need a safe and secure place to live, a place that they can afford. They need structure in
their lives and meaningful activities that they can engage in everyday any gainful employment
and a source of income they need relationships with family, friends, co-workers, neighbors.
They need social connection, they need opportunities to participate and contribute to their
community.

They need opportunities to determine for themselves who they are and what theyre going to
do with their lives and they need to be treated humanely with dignity and respect. Now,
looking at this list I think most of us can agree that these things are not extreme or
unreasonable facts. These are things that we all need or want for our own lives. So, whats the
problem? Well, thats a complex question. There are complex problems that we know. That
their legislation and policy barriers we know that there is a fragmented and poorly resourced
system of services right. We all had heard about staffing shortages. We had heard about wait
lists. We had heard about communication problems and problems with the flow of
information. But, situated in that is arguably one of the most profound barriers to people
getting what the things that they need and thats us.

The NIMBY phenomenon or the Not in My Backyard syndrome was first identified in the 1960s
and 1970s as the deinstitutionalization movement was gaining momentum and it arose in
response to efforts to secure community supported housing for people with mental illnesses
and people with developmental disabilities were being moved out of long term hospitals, so
this is an us and them mentality, ok? So we understand and we may even have compassion for
the fact that people need a place to live but we dont want them to live on our street and we
dont want them to live in our neighborhood where you understand that people need jobs and
that they need a source of income but we dont want them working in our workplace and we
believe that people should be contributing to their communities but we dont want them
volunteering side by side with us and in this way we deny people the thing that they need the
most. They need a safe place to live. They need a job. They need connections to their
community and healthy relationships. We exclude people from our communities and while
mental illness is not a predictor of violence excluding people from communities is linked to
violence, so conversely including people in our communities contributes to mental recovery
and contributes to reducing the risk of people re-engaging in criminal behavior, so what power
do you have to include people in your community? Are you a landlord or property manager? Is
there a vacancy in your building? You have the power to give someone a place to live? Are you
an employer you hiring in your workplace right now? Do you have the power to give someone
a job? Are you a volunteer in your community? Do you have the opportunity to provide a
connection for someone who may not have any other social connections?

Im not suggesting that we set aside our concerns about public safety and Im not suggesting
that we set aside the precautions that we take for personal safety. What Im saying is that we
all have a responsibility to the people around us to ensure that everyone has the thing that
they need for example resources, support, services and opportunities, so that together we can
be more effective in building healthy and safe communities for everyone.

Thank you
ESTA ES LA LISTA QUE SE MENCIONABA ARRIBA

WHAT DO PEOPLE NEED?

Safe secure housing

Structure and meaningful activities

Gainful employment

Interpersonal relationships

Social connectedness

Autonomy and agency

Empowering and humane relationships with service providers

ESTE ES EL LINK DEL VIDEO QUE EL PROFESOR MOSTRO EN CLASE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1LIlKoxwjg