Where mentally ill find help

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When mentally ill defendants enter the court system, it could lead to a chance for diagnosis and much-needed treatment.

For more than 30 years, the Kane County Diagnostic Center has given evaluations and treatment recommendations to those in the court system, either at an attorney’s request or by a judge’s order.

Director Tim Brown said the center sees a wide variety of people with a wide range of mental health-related issues.

During fiscal year 2007, the center’s team, which includes clinical psychologists and doctoral students, completed 365 psychological tests, stemming from 736 referrals – a 6 percent increase compared to the year prior, according to a report issued by Brown.

When defendants first comes to the center, they receive psychological tests, which could include personality tests, IQ tests, sex-offender evaluations and substance-abuse evaluations, among other practices, depending on the situation.

This process could take from a couple of hours to more than 20 hours for each individual, creating lengthy wait times from those in the court system, Brown said.

The center often is strapped with a large workload. Brown said more staff would be helpful, but it wouldn’t necessarily help reduce the wait for a report.

“The court system and all the players have grown to rely on the services we provide,” he said. “There’s no fault or no blame [on a high caseload]. If you build it, they will come and we’ve been there 30 years.”

If evaluations weren’t as thorough and lengthy, they would lose meaning, Brown said.

Many evaluations often involve discussing a defendant’s life. Brown recalled a recent case where a man charged with domestic battery discussed his childhood.

Although he did well in school as a boy and thrived, he became involved in gangs and started witnessing violence. Brown said that man did not realize what he saw, including murder, affected his actions as an adult, but Brown was able to point it out to him during the evaluation before recommending treatment.

As soon as a psychological report is complete, the staff recommends treatment options. This often includes the use of community services, like the Ecker Center for Mental Health in Elgin.

Executive Director Karen Beyer said the center treated 3,400 people from July 1, 2007 to June 30 of this year. Many were from the Kane County Diagnostic Center, but Beyer said she doesn’t track those numbers.

Eleven were from the county’s Treatment Alternative Court, which is an intensive, selective two-year program for defendants with a mental illness.

Beyer said her center offers out-patient and in-patient services, including help for those in a psychiatric emergency.

The center also provides assistance in receiving Medicaid, and even instructions on how to manage a mental illness while holding a job and maintaining a life that might have been before illness struck, Beyer said.

“We serve a continuum of people,” she said. “Some people just come to us to for therapy for a short time. Then there are people who are working with a more severe mental illness.”

Beyer said she considers her center and other similar services in the area another part of a larger system, addressing mental health issues in the judicial arena.

“We are all part of a system that serves people,” she said. “The people we work with have multiple needs. We all need each other.”