Indiana Convention Center hosts historic 2022 Indiana Mental Health Summit
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — State officials are pushing to address a mental health crisis in Indiana. On Friday, the Indiana Convention Center hosted the first Indiana Mental Health Summit.
“We just don’t as every speaker said get the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary together and so, this is really historic,” the judge at LaPorte County Superior Court #4, Greta Friedman, said.
It’s the first of its kind in Indiana.
The 2022 Mental Health Summit brought community teams and police officers from all 92 counties together to keep mental health at the forefront, especially since the pandemic hit.
There were also discussions on the implementation of the national mental health hotline (known as 988).
“More and more officers are being required and asked to respond to persons in crisis and as you know that’s really not the model that policing was based on, so if we can get this right and improve our response it benefits not only us, but our entire community,” Hendricks County sheriff Brett Clark, said.
“I’m very concerned about mental health needs. Right now, they’re larger than ever since the pandemic. My biggest concern is that we don’t have the workforce to provide the services or the volume of services that are needed right now,” the president and CEO of Southwestern Behavioral Healthcare, Inc., Katy Adams, said.
On Friday, state and community leaders put a spotlight on these issues, citing that there isn’t enough funding to provide more mental health services, housing and inpatient and outpatient treatment programs, especially in the smaller communities.
“Somebody who is in a very rural community who just doesn’t have access , what they have is very caring and wants to help, but they just don’t have much of it,” Freidman said.
According to Indiana Superior Court Judge Greta Friedman, there are lot of places with a lack of mental health services, and that can lead to people spending unnecessary time in jail.
“If you are homeless and you are struggling with mental illness the jail is where you’re going to wind up because there is no transitional housing, there’s no shelter and that’s part of the problem that brings us here today,” Friedman said.
“We need to determine what our priorities are and certainly the health and welfare of our citizens has to be right up there with public safety and the basic issues that government exists to do,” Clark said.
Community leaders say they hope to see more funding for more mental health services within the next few years.