Browsing by Author "Canada, Kelli E."

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    Role of Social Support and Ego Network Characteristics on Quality of Life: Implications for Persons Involved with Mental Health Courts
    (2021) Kondrat, David C.; Sullivan, W. Patrick; Canada, Kelli E.; Jaggers, Jeremiah W.; School of Social Work
    Mental health courts offer alternatives to incarceration for persons with severe mental illness who are involved in the criminal justice system. These courts have the dual function of ensuring treatment for persons involved in the court as well as ensuring the safety of the public. Persons with severe mental illness who are involved in mental health courts rely on others for support, such as family members. Others may buttress the participant from engaging in criminal activities and provide for needs of the participant. The supportiveness as well as the composition of one’s network members may play a role in the success of mental health court participants, such as successfully completing the mental health court program and avoiding incarceration. Little research has explored how social support impacts mental health court participants. We explored how the composition and sense of support of network members were associated with mental health court participants’ quality of life. We regressed quality of life on social support and network characteristics of 80 participants in two mental health courts. Findings suggest that perceived support is positively associated with quality of life, and the proportion of family in one’s network was negatively related to quality of life. Findings suggest that persons involved in mental health courts need supportive others in their social networks in addition to family. More research is needed to explore the reasons having a higher proportion of family members in one’s network is associated with lower quality of life. Practitioners need to pay attention to and leverage mental health court participants’ social networks to help improve their quality of life.
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    What Happens to Mental Health Court Noncompleters?
    (Wiley, 2015) Ray, Bradley; Hood, Brittany J.; Canada, Kelli E.; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
    Mental health court (MHC) research consistently finds that defendants who successfully complete and graduate from the court are less likely to recidivate than those who do not. However, research has not assessed what happens to these noncompleters once they are sent back to traditional court. Using follow-up data on six years of noncompleters from pre-adjudication MHC, we examine what happens to these defendants in traditional court. Findings suggest that 63.7% of defendants' charges were dismissed, 21.0% received probation, and 15.3% were sentenced to incarceration. We examine the time to disposition and differences in defendant characteristics and disposition outcome as well as the relationship between disposition and subsequent recidivism. Results suggest that more severe punishments in traditional court are associated with recidivism. Logistic regression analysis shows that defendants whose charges were dismissed in traditional court were less likely to recidivate than those who were sentenced to probation or incarceration. Our findings highlight the need for future MHC evaluations to consider traditional court outcomes and support trends towards post-adjudication courts. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.