Kansas Mental Health Summit

• Jurisdiction: Kansas,United States
• Citation: Vol. 91 No. 1 Pg. 18
• Pages: 18
• Publication year: 2022

Kansas Mental Health SummitNo. 91 J. Kan. Bar Assn 1, 18 (2022)Kansas Bar JournalFebruary, 2022

January 2022

Kansas Mental Health Summit Scheduled for April 13-14, 2022

By Judge Robert Wonnell

What can I do?" That was the question I kept asking myself as I traversed an icy interstate road through the Badlands while returning from Deadwood, South Dakota, in the fall of 2019. I had just attended a regional summit as a member of the Kansas delegation that also included Chief Justice Marla Luckert, Hon. Patty Macke Dick, Hon. Timothy McCarthy and former Office of Judicial Administration Director of Education Denise Kilwein. The summit was part of the national initiative to improve the court and community's response to mental illness issues in the justice system. This initiative is a collaboration of the National Center for State Courts, the Conference of State Court Administrators, the Conference of Chief Justices and the State Justice Institute.

I asked "what can I do" because before attending the summit, I had limited involvement in the world of behavioral health. But the more I learned at the summit, the more I knew this was a world where I wanted to fulfill my role as a public servant. I will exceed my character limit if I tell you everything I learned at the summit and subsequent to my attendance, but I will offer a few comments and statistics for your review here:

Only 55.9% of Kansas children with a mental or behavioral health condition receive treatment or counseling.^[1]

In a 2021 ranking of states and the District of Columbia, Kansas ranked last with adults reporting unmet mental or behavioral health needs and 38^th in adult access to care.^[2]

There are approximately only 17 behavioral health professionals for every 10,000 residents in Kansas.^[3]

1,388,836 people in Kansas (48% of the state's population) reside in designated shortage areas and/or are served by a facility with shortages of behavioral health care professionals.^[4]

Local jails and detention centers are the largest providers of mental health services - for both adults and children - in the country.^[5]

Tens of thousands of defendants charged with misdemeanors or non-violent felonies who have a mental health or behavioral health problem are languishing in jail while awaiting a state hospital bed or community restoration services, often waiting longer than if sentenced for the original crime.^[6]

When I heard the last claim at the summit, I...