Positive Interventions for Youth Offenders with Mental Illness

Recent articles in the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times address the strain on juvenile correction systems as they are increasingly relied upon to handle a growing population of youth offenders with mental health issues. The situation is becoming even more perilous as cash-starved states are slashing funding for mental health programs in communities and schools.

It is not atypical for youth who struggle with mental health disorders to have unmet needs across all of their life domains. Often, youth land in juvenile hall because it was the only way they could get connected to the mental health services they need. Whether the discussion is about juvenile corrections or special education, for the most part, we are talking about the same youth. They just happen to access the system through different entry points, and all too frequently this happens to be through juvenile corrections. The particular issue faced by California’s juvenile system, and other systems across the country, has raised the public’s awareness of the need for better integration within the youth system of care—from special education and mental health services to foster care services, juvenile corrections and probation.

No doubt problems exist, and public discourse is one way to enact change. Sunny Hills has been working on the ground implementing innovative new solutions that are making a measurable difference in the lives of these young people. The agency has been tapped by the Sonoma County departments of Probation and Mental Health to participate in a unique partnership designed specifically to address the mental health needs of juvenile offenders and their families. While other states may be slashing community-based mental health programs, Sonoma County has been quite progressive in its approach to treating juvenile offenders with mental health issues. Research shows that youth with mental disorders are placed at higher risk for re-offending. The County made an intentional decision to concentrate its efforts on addressing these youths’ mental health needs as a way of also addressing their delinquent behavior.

Up to now, it was not a widely held belief that mental health services could be delivered effectively outside of the jail; the prevailing belief was that containment would be necessary in order to diagnose and treat offenders. In reality, as the juvenile corrections system was flexed beyond its capacity, youth were being misdiagnosed and under-served in most all aspects of their functioning, often worsening their mental illness. This is precisely why programs like our Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) and Project PRIDE are needed; our experience demonstrates that juvenile offenders with mental health issues can be treated successfully in the community, improving their mental health functioning and lessening their chances for recidivism.

The ACT program, designed to address the needs of mentally ill juvenile offenders, and its newer companion, Project PRIDE which targets Santa Rosa-based youth offenders with known or suspected gang affiliations, are both community-based mental health programs that treat youth in context of their homes, schools and communities. The ultimate goal is to lessen time in juvenile hall, support the youth to regain a sense of emotional well-being, and also develop the assets and competencies (improving social skills, employability, education, and civic and other life skills) to help them become productive members of society.

And it works: in the six month period from January through June 2008, 75% of graduates (12 of 15) from the ACT program transitioned to less restrictive settings requiring a lower level of care. After entering the ACT program, the number of new petitions—e.g. incidents occurring whereby youth break the terms of their probation (curfew, drug usage, school attendance, associating with forbidden adults or teens, AWOL) to more serious misdemeanors (drug possession, property destruction) to felony charges—for delinquent youth improved by 90%.

The successes achieved during the pilot year of the ACT program spawned the development of new services designed to treat specialized populations of youth. This year, the ACT program will deliver services to youth with mental illness who are returning from residential and juvenile institutions, for example correctional camps or out-of-state locked facilities. The ultimate objective is to reduce the young person’s time in an out-of-home placement and provide the tools and support to soften their landing back into their community.

At Sunny Hills, we believe that programs like ACT have the potential to make systemic changes to the way we view and treat juvenile offenders with mental illness. These youth aren’t bad seeds; they are young people who are struggling with a severe illness and simply need the right resources delivered in an appropriate setting to have a meaningful chance at turning their lives around. We believe they can. Our youth are living proof.