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For Immediate Release
Date: November 15, 2016
Contact: Leslie Piotrowski
(847) 377-8055
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Waukegan, Ill. – The Lake County Health Department/Community Health Center (LCHD/CHC)
recently received two grants to better serve people with mental illness in Lake
County. It received a four-year grant from the Substance Abuse and
Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in the amount up to $400,000 per
year. The total award is a maximum of $1,600,000. LCHD/CHC received
this grant to support and enhance integration efforts started in 2015 at its behavioral
health center in Libertyville. Funds will specifically be used to improve
health outcomes for those patients with severe mental illness by adding
supportive services focused on improving their health outcomes, e.g., obesity,
diabetes and cardiovascular disease at the location.
“Persons
with chronic mental illness tend to die 20-25 years earlier than the general
population,” said Mark Pfister, the Health Department’s Interim Executive Director. “These deaths are often due to a lack of
engagement in care of treatable and preventable medical conditions. To address
this concern, we recently added primary care services to our Outpatient Mental
Health Services program in Libertyville to provide its mental health patients
with easy access to medical care. The grant will substantially reinforce this
initiative.”
In
addition to the psychiatry, therapy and general medical care already available
at the site, patients will have access to supportive services including peer
support, substance abuse counseling, tobacco cessation counseling, care
coordination, case management and nutritional counseling.
The Health Department was also awarded
$84,500 from the Illinois Children’s Healthcare Foundation. The two-year
grant will support a countywide mental health first aid training program for
individuals and agencies serving youth. The Health Department will begin
conducting these trainings throughout the community in the spring of 2017. Targeted groups will include personnel at
schools, juvenile justice agencies, faith-based organizations and youth-serving
non-profits. The project will also add treatment capacity by funding two
part-time child and adolescent counselors in the Child and Adolescent
Behavioral Health Services Program at the Health Department’s 3010 Grand Avenue
location in Waukegan. Mental health
first aid training empowers individuals to identify mental health disorders and
connect individuals experiencing these disorders to treatment resources.
LCHD/CHC provides
treatment, training and support services to persons experiencing problems
related to emotional and mental illness, or drug and alcohol addiction. Its
many services use various forms of evidenced-based treatment in both inpatient
and outpatient settings. Individual and group therapy, case management, housing
counseling, psychiatric medication, and emotional/cognitive skill building
methods of treatment are used. For more information, visit:http://www.lakecountyil.gov/684/Behavioral-Health-Services.
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