If the new president of an organization that advocates for the mentally ill feels at home in jail, it isn’t for the reason you might expect.
Bill Kissel, elected in May to head the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Georgia Chapter, has spent half his life working in correctional health care. He also comes from a family that shares similar interests — one brother is a probation officer, another is a sheriff’s deputy. His cousin is the longtime sheriff of a county in Massachusetts.
Crisply dressed in a red polo shirt, houndstooth sport coat and slacks, Kissel exuded enthusiasm at a recent meeting with law enforcement officials. His kind, crinkled eyes no doubt served him well early in his career, when he worked as a crisis intervention counselor at a juvenile facility in Connecticut and as a mental health technician at a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts.
“Working with patients day to day has been the best job I’ve ever had,” Kissel said. “I enjoyed the contact with patients.”
Later, Kissel spent 20 years working for the Georgia Department of Corrections, rising from an entry-level mental health professional to the director of health services. He now works as national director of mental health operations for a correctional health care provider called NaphCare.
Those experiences make him uniquely qualified to steer NAMI Georgia toward its goal of reducing the number of people with mental illness in Georgia’s jails and prisons. NAMI supports people with mental illness and engages in public education.
Nationally, one-fifth of inmates suffer from serious or persistent mental illness, which makes collaborating with law enforcement an important part of NAMI’s mission.
Kissel is chairman of an advisory board for the Crisis Intervention Team program, which trains officers on how to de-escalate encounters with people who suffer from mental illness. He is also chairman of the Metro Sheriffs’ Jail Mental Health Task Force, which includes representatives from the Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale county sheriff’s offices. The group gathers to share tips and promote training on dealing with their mentally ill populations.
The newest initiative Kissel is spearheading involves the sheriffs in Gwinnett, Newton and Rockdale counties and the Gwinnett-Rockdale-Newton Community Services Board. The program would pair inmates about to be released with a caseworker to direct them to housing, treatment and employment services.
Gwinnett Sheriff Butch Conway said he has long hoped to implement a program like the one Kissel is proposing. Behind bars, people with mental illness often benefit from consistent counseling, drug and alcohol treatment, and nutrition. But many inmates with mental illness in his jail don’t belong there, Conway said. They got caught in the system’s revolving door because they can’t cope with their symptoms.
“They have no support system, so pretty soon they are back in the jail because they couldn’t make it outside,” Conway said. “Anything we can do to address that I think will help lower the inmate population and reduce recidivism.”
NAMI Georgia will seek $450,000 in federal grants to form the program, which would fund six caseworkers to start.
The program is patterned off a case management system Kissel helped implement when he worked for the state Department of Corrections. TAPP (Treatment and Aftercare for Probationers and Parolees) proved to be successful in reducing recidivism, but it ultimately fell victim to state budget cuts.
Kissel hopes that, if successful, the county jail program could become a national model for dealing with mentally ill inmates.
“It will allow them to have a meaningful life in the community and not in a facility,” Kissel said.
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MEET BILL KISSEL
Age: 53
City of residence: Lilburn
Occupation: National director of mental health operations, NaphCare
Experience: 27 years in the field of correctional health care
Education: Bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Northeastern University, master’s degree in mental health counseling from Suffolk University
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