Porter County Jail staff and officers with the sheriff's department are getting another tool for handling people with mental illness.

Training has started on “Mental Health First Aid,” part of a national program to identify mental illness and learn how to best deal with people's situations.

The program also has a component for law enforcement to learn how to identify depression within their own ranks.

Sheriff David Reynolds said 95 percent of the inmates in the Porter County Jail have substance abuse problems, and 85 percent suffer from mental health issues, and the two often overlap.

“It's putting another tool in your toolbox to deal with mental health,” Reynolds said. “This is another way we can de-escalate issues every day.”

The program aims to keep both officers and those they encounter safer, he said.

Todd Willis, director of prevention and education at Porter-Starke Services, said similar training for law enforcement officers will soon be mandatory, and Porter County will be ahead of the curve.

“Mental health problems are common, extremely common,” he said, adding data shows that by 2025, the greatest U.S. health problem will be depression.

According to statistics provided by Willis, 19 percent of U.S. adults with a mental disorder suffer from anxiety, and another 6.8 percent suffer from depression; 8 percent deal with substance abuse, and less than .5 percent have schizophrenia.

“Ninety percent of the people who walk into Porter-Starke have anxiety disorder, they're depressed or it's substance abuse,” he said.

The biggest psychiatric hospital in the county is the jail, Willis said, adding that Cook County Jail in Chicago has one of the largest psychiatric populations in the country.

An assortment of factors precipitated law enforcement officers seeing more people with mental illness, Willis said. That includes the closing of mental hospitals, which turned people out without providing somewhere for them to go, and the fact that the remaining hospitals can pick and choose their patients.

“They end up back in the community and on your doorstep,” he said.

Exacerbating the problem is the wait for mental health services, which can be two weeks, he said. Getting an appointment with a psychiatrist to receive medication can take three months. Awareness about the types of mental illness and their symptoms will allow police to better serve the public, Willis said.

“Most mentally ill people are not violent. Where they're going to get it is as victims,” he said, adding people with mental illness are 11 times more likely to be crime victims, despite the perception pushed by the national media that those with mental illness perpetrate violent crimes.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.