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PROPOSED RESOLUTION
RECOGNIZING MAY 22, 2016 AS "STOP THE STIGMA SUNDAY"
WHEREAS, in 2013 President Barack Obama proclaimed May to be National Mental Health Awareness Month; and,
WHEREAS, in 2011 Illinois made greater reductions in state funding for mental health than any other state in the United States of America; and,
WHEREAS, the current round of state budget negotiations in Springfield indicates that Illinois is on track to continue its status as one of the poorest funders of mental health services in the nation; and,
WHEREAS, according to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, the reduction in funding for mental health services across multiple levels of government, has resulted in the Cook County Jail being the largest mental health facility in the state and possibly the nation; and,
WHEREAS, according to a joint report authored by the Mental Health Movement of Chicago and AFSCME Council 31, Chicago's closure of half of its mental health clinics in April of 2012 resulted in a failure by the City of Chicago to account for hundreds and perhaps thousands of people who had depended on these clinics for mental health treatment services; and,
WHEREAS, that same report, entitled "Abandoning the Most Vulnerable," cites a complete lack of a comprehensive effort to determine how many people lost access to mental health treatment services after the Chicago clinic closures and similar lack of effort to make contact with the individuals who lost access to treatment and connect them with new service providers; and,
WHEREAS, Cook County, which is charged with providing services to the most vulnerable members of our local population, deals every day with the consequences of an inadequate safety net that has stranded too many of our residents without access to care that they urgently need; and,
WHEREAS, we count among those consequences an overcrowded Jail, court system and Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, all of which constitute a significant dr...
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