New Phoenix team tackles recidivism of those with mental illness

Child First is a program in Connecticut, where staff members deliver home-based parent guidance and child-parent psychotherapy to help prevent the detrimental physical and mental effects of toxic stress on children. The engagement is guided by an evidence-based methodology called Child-Parent Psychotherapy, which is grounded in collaborative problem solving.

Mississippians who receive earned probation for crimes that do not carry a death sentence or involve deadly weapons will now have access to high-school equivalency education, alcohol and drug counseling, re-entry and employment services—and perhaps, most importantly, "Thinking for a Change," an evidence-based cognitive behavioral-therapy program.

An array of services in Pima County, Arizona, greets hundreds of people getting released early from jail or helps keep them out of jail in the first place. By providing drug treatment, housing, job assistance, and other help that people need instead of incarceration, the county's Criminal Justice Reform Unit and Jail Population Review Committee saved the county $2 million in jail costs over just part of 2020. Drug use also declined and officials hope to see longer-range benefits in lower recidivism.

In Australia, a universal survey in several secondary schools helps to identify students who are at risk of becoming homeless and connects them with wraparound services. The prevention-based model may soon be piloted in King County, Washington.

In a statewide, multi-business effort, California is working to identify a way to use technology to intervene in mental crises through the use of psychiatric apps. Acting as an early warning system, the piloting of these apps has allowed for collaboration between state officials, the app engineers and the users themselves.

For nearly two decades, Miami-Dade's Criminal Mental Health Project has worked to decriminalize mental illness, diverting people from jail into treatment and social services with an approach that has helped cut the jail population almost by half and save taxpayers millions. Combining the services of health care providers, law enforcement, and housing agencies, the project pairs participants with peer specialists and puts them on a treatment plan that can get their criminal charges dropped or reduced. Another benefit of the project: lower recidivism rates for people with serious mental illnesses.

To reduce the stigma around seeking treatment for addiction, the Interim House in Philadelphia provides a women-exclusive program that focus on treating past traumas through the use of dialectical behavior therapy. Based on the idea that women are more open to talking about their histories in women-only settings, the program increases trust between therapist and client as well as between the women attending the program.

Massachusetts' Roca program uses five sites in the state to teach young men in their late teens and early 20s coping strategies to solve personal problems and change their behavior. The program targets men with previous criminal problems who actively resist other services and therapy, and who are deemed at high risk of violence. More than 80 percent of its graduates, who number more than 850 per year, have no new arrests, and two-thirds hold jobs six months after finishing the program. Seeing this success, Baltimore has committed $17 million in private and public funds to open a Roca chapter.

Childhood trauma has lasting effects on development and stress response, but these can be treated with behavioral therapy and proper interventions. Dr. Nadine Burke Harris of the Center For Youth Wellness insists that part of general care should be ACE assessments for childhood trauma. The effects of intervening when trauma is recognized has serious, positive, lifelong implications for patients.

Healing trauma has never been an easy process but programs like Healing Hurt People help to promote recovery in traumatized, angry young men. This program, in partnership with local medical services, aims to provide therapy in place of violence, which would only cause more trauma down the road. Those who stick with the program have found great success in overcoming their pasts.