SALT LAKE CITY — As a part of Mental Health Awareness Month, the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office held a press conference on Tuesday to discuss what resources are available here in our community, along with how they believe they are making major strides in helping those who are suffering and decriminalizing mental health.
"It’s a public health issue," DA Sim Gill told reporters about mental health.
Gill said he played a major role in developing something called the Mental Health Court within Salt Lake County some 22 years ago — now one of the longest-running of its kind in the country.
"The idea was that those intercepting with the criminal justice system: What can we do to assist them? How can we help them by wrapping their systems around them, getting them access to their medications? Can we get better outcomes?" he said.
Albert Hamilton graduated from the 3rd District Mental Health Court about a year and a half ago. He said he is bipolar and over the past couple of decades has been in and out of the criminal justice system. Each time, he says, was linked to an episode of psychosis.
"I got into mental health court after being on the street of Salt Lake for a year. I had been homeless and in shelters. I was destitute. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I didn’t have family. I didn’t have friends. Everyone had pretty much shut me out of their lives," he said.
Hamilton said after enough charges put him in prison, he opted for Mental Health Court instead, not really knowing what it was.
"I mean, it was incredible. It gave me a path forward out of the situation I was in, which I would not have been able to get out of myself," he said.
Taylor Psalto from Valley Behavioral Health worked with Hamilton as one of her clients in the Mental Health Court. She supervises the jail diversion outreach team, trying to offer treatment alternatives instead of incarceration.
"I work with courthouses and the DA and probation officers to essentially pull my clients out of custody and into treatment where they can hopefully have better lives," she explained.
She says they work on housing and medication stabilization.
Experts also spoke about additional resources available to people suffering from any kind of mental health crisis, including the 988 hotline, operated out of the Huntsman Mental Health Institute.
"Calling 988 is a great resource that’s available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," said Claudine Miller, who works with the Huntsman Mental Health Institute and Mobile Crisis Outreach Team, helping respond to people in crisis and determine what their next best step will be, "And that’s where MCOT comes in. That’s our Mobile Crisis Outreach Team, and here in Salt Lake County, we are here 24/7. It’s a program where we arrive in an unmarked vehicle."
She says these teams of two — a mental health therapist and a peer specialist — respond in plain clothes with the goal of de-escalating the situation.
"It becomes this beautiful interaction between our team and the community and we will go wherever the person needs," Miller said.
