Letter from the PRF Chair

Greetings! I hope that this message finds you well and you are enjoying your summer. It is hard to believe that over a month has passed since we all convened in Philadelphia for the 2015 Recovery Workforce Summit. From the Mummer’s performance to the TED-like talks and other new session formats, the Summit was the highlight of the year within our psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery communities. Our Academy of Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Recovery continues to be a leading source of training and educational opportunities for the mental health and recovery workforce.

The Summit also is a time for us to catch up on the work we do and the communities where we hope to affect change. Like many of the communities where you work, throughout Chicago and the state of Illinois, we continue to battle shortfalls and proposed cuts in mental health funding. One area of concern for the mental health community is the way in which the redistribution of resources will affect services overall, but particularly at Cook County Jail, already characterized as “the nation’s largest mental health facility.” In fact, in an open letter to the new Illinois governor, Bruce Rauner, Sheriff Tom Dart expressed this very concern, noting that short-sighted cuts in mental health service systems will not only result in higher costs to taxpayers within the community, but that “we will be able to look around and tell everyone that we’re number one in the country for turning our back on people with mental illness.” On any given day, about one-third of the approximately 9,000 individuals detained at Cook County jail experience serious mental health issues. As a result, Sheriff Dart has taken a firm stand to ensure that the workforce within the jail is prepared to address the health and recovery needs of the many individuals with psychiatric disabilities detained there.

For example, the 300-400 new correctional officers hired each year are required to participate in more than 60 hours of advanced training related to mental health. Further, in May 2015, the Sheriff appointed a clinical psychologist as the new Executive Director for Cook County Jail, Dr. Nneka Jones Tapia; to date, Dr. Jones Tapia is the only mental health professional who leads a correctional facility in the country. Most recently, these efforts also have extended to improving benefits programs to attract a more qualified and skilled mental health workforce, particularly psychiatrists and clinical psychologists. It is here that PRA & PRF and the Academy may be able to create positive changes.

Initiatives like this not only provide exceptional opportunities for PRA & PRF to advance training for the workforce, but they also serve as a reminder of the diverse locations where we find our chapter members. We also must remember that many individuals detained in our jails and prisons will one day return to their communities. As such, psychiatric rehabilitation programs and practitioners must develop and sustain open relationships and communication with our correctional systems, law enforcement, and other partners to ensure that recovery and community integration continue to be focal components of mental health systems, no matter where these services are provided. These relationships and our presence within communities are vital to recovery. As the leader for the development, support, and dissemination of information about the practice of psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery, I invite all of us at PRA & PRF to identify and create opportunities for collaboration with these critical community partners.