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CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) — Of the more than a million veterans returning from war, around 20 percent come back with mental illness, according to the mental health experts.
At times, mental illness can lead to crime and then jail time.
Court systems across the country continue to look for ways to help veterans. Chesapeake is working to get the mentally ill what they really need: Treatment instead of punishment. It’s also a way that the city can do the right thing for those who served our country.
Thomas Pratt is well known at the Hampton Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He has made it his mission to help people. It started with two decades of Navy service. It took a turn after mental illness took hold of his life.
“My life fell apart. I lost everything,” Pratt said. “I lost my job. I lost my business. I lost my family. I lost my car, my home and everything.
Pratt sought and got help. The Hampton VAMC treated him for his illness. The City of Chesapeake’s Behavioral Center took a chance and hired him to work with other veterans as a peer counselor.
“It helped me in my pathway to recovery, it helped me mature much faster than I perhaps would have done without that position,” Pratt said, smiling.
That was 2007. Since then, Pratt has made strides to help other veterans with mental illness. So has the City of Chesapeake.
Inside the Chesapeake jail are 151 inmates with mental illness and 47 veterans. Chesapeake Behavioral Director Joe Scislowicz believes those two groups need similar treatment, but jail is not the place to get it.
“That shouldn’t be the first course of treatment,” he said.
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“One of the things we identified was that we had an opportunity to have a behavioral docket and veterans’ docket, it could release the number of folks we have in jail,” he explained.
The idea was to create mental illness docket, but one that included veterans.
Here’s how it works: The jail or the public defender identifies a veteran or person with mental illness who has committed a crime. Generally, it will be someone who is accused of a misdemeanor and is frequently in trouble. They will have to plead guilty and go before a special judge on the docket. Instead of jail time, the person will get immediate treatment.
“The sooner you can get someone into treatment, when they are motivated, the more likely they are to follow through and have success,” Scislowicz said.
For the veterans, they’ll get a companion on their recovery: A peer specialist, like Thomas Pratt, another veteran who has seen the lows of mental illness and can help toward recovery.
“The peer can really, really, really, instill and embed hope in that veteran starting that journey,” Pratt said.
That journey — the same one Pratt has traveled — will give veterans a chance to end the cycle of crime.
10 On Your Side talked with several mental health advocates across the state. The consensus was any jail diversion program is good, but surrounding guilt was a concern to them.
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