YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Renee DiSalvo met with members of Youngstown City Council Monday morning to talk about the Mental Health Diversion Program and the work that has been done in recent years to get it started.

She said the reason for meeting with council is to give its members a “foundation for the May 2 meeting we will be holding with some of the larger stakeholders for this tentative diversion program.”

DiSalvo said she thinks the four council members present “know that we have a crisis with mental illness in the city of Youngstown. We’re seeing it immensely in the courts and the jails.” She said “because of our inability to assess these individuals and get them into treatment, the police department and the jails have become the first responders for those with severe mental illness.”

She said there is “limited access to community based mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment, and there is no capacity anywhere for those who might need further hospitalization,” she said. “Our health care systems are fragmented. All of our stakeholders, all of our mental health treatment providers, it seems that everyone, while doing the best they can, are working in a vacuum instead of working collaboratively.”

She said there is a mental health diversion program in Miami-Dade County in Florida for people with severe mental illness. She said most people who need such treatment come into municipal courts like Youngstown Municipal Court on misdemeanor offenses.

That is because they “have the inability to get the treatment they need and stay on their meds, and they don’t even have the wherewithal to form intent for some of the severe crimes,” she said. “They are more reactive. They’re impulsive. So we see it with criminal trespassing, assault, menacing, disorderly conduct, animal abuse.” She said many are homeless and come in with violations of housing codes.

DiSalvo said she “got on this bandwagon” about four years ago following what they are doing with the Miami-Dade diversion program. She said she wants the council members to watch an online documentary called “The Definition of Insanity.” It is about the Miami-Dade diversion program.

It shows the tremendous success that area is having through a mental health treatment court similar to what Youngstown will be creating, “depending on what we are able to get with our stakeholders”, DiSalvo said. “We definitely would need to beef up the crisis intervention team for the sheriff’s office and the city,” she said.

DiSalvo said she has talked with agencies that can play a big role in making the Mental Health Diversion Program a success, and “They are all on board.”

She said the May 2 meeting will address the “concrete avenues we can take, the plans that we would like to see happen. She said her talk Monday was to “give you an idea what this program can look like so that when you go into the May 2 meeting, you are not going blind.”

She said that under the Mental Health Diversion Program, when a 911 call is made, an assessment for mental health issues is made then. Is there a mental health component or “is this just a crime,” she said.

If there is a mental health component, the 911 call taker will notify the Youngstown Police Department and “activate the Crisis Intervention Team.” Maybe it does not appear to be a CIT situation, but when officers arrive, they determine there is a mental health component, and the CIT is called.

That way, the beat officers can go back to patrolling their part of the city and the CIT takes over. “You will have a police officer who is part of the CIT team and another member of the CIT team who will de-escalate the situation, offering them the possibility of treatment.

“And if there is no crime, it’s just a mental health crisis, take the individual and get them help. You avoid charges, jail, the officers who are on the road,” she said. That way an officer is not sitting at the hospital half a day while a patient is evaluated for mental health issues.

If there is a crime, the person is taken to the county jail and assessed for mental health. And if the person agrees, he or she is taken to a crisis step-down unit to be stabilized. Then it is voluntary to become part of the Youngstown Municipal Court Mental Health Diversion Program, which lasts about a year, she said.

She said the key difference in this type of mental health diversion program is that it addresses mental health issues at the beginning of the process. In that way, it “decriminalizes mental illness. That is the biggest thing, getting people the help they need.”

A person in the program gets peer support for one year. “It helps get them on the meds, keeps them on the meds,” she said. “It’s going to involve a community effort because we don’t have a mental health hospital here,” she said. She said Miami-Dade has had a program for 20 years.

“The stats were so impressive, they now have their own hospital,” she said. “They have such buy-in from the government, from the treatment facilities. It has decreased their homelessness. It has freed up beds at the jail. They have saved so much money, it basically pays for itself,” she said.

She and several other people she serves with on Ohio Attorney General task forces for competency in probate and for criminal justice and mental health went to Miami-Dade for three days and “went through the training, and we are convinced it can happen here,” she said.

She said one reason she thinks that is she has “laid the groundwork for the past two years.” She said some laws or administrative codes may have to be changed, so she met with local legislators, who will attend the May 2 meeting.

“The Mahoning County jail is on board, the mental health board is on board, so we have all of the necessary players ready to move,” she said.

She said she is not yet asking for anything from Youngstown City Council, “but I would imagine at some point there will be an ask,” she said.