Bridging the Gap for Mental Health: One Family's Story

Jim Kness wishes his brother had the support he was able to find for himself.

Until a few years ago, he never really wondered if he needed help, although he knew his anger could be messy sometimes.

But he realized he did need help after he sought mental health treatment for his son, who was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. The doctor asked him questions about himself, and Kness eventually went to a psychologist, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder. He went on medication and knows he is better off now.

“If somebody is blind, you don’t know what things look like unless somebody is there to tell you,” he said. “A lot of people with mental illness, they don’t know. It’s just different. You view life through your mind, and if your mind is not right ...”

He considers himself lucky, he said. He has friends, church, family and support.

“I don’t want my family to be at the mercy of my emotions. That was the big thing. I didn’t know why I was so angry,” he said. “(Treatment) just made my life so much better. I never knew anything could be different.”

But his brother was not so fortunate.

Jim’s younger brother, Travis Kness, is awaiting trial on charges of kidnapping, menacing, weapons possession and others. His family says he might not be in his current situation if he’d been able to get help, if he’d been willing to help himself.

His family says the system failed him, and while they acknowledge he needs to be behind bars for the safety of others, they say other people might be more fortunate if a tax hike on the Larimer ballot passes next month.

Kness’s family are among a group of people supporting Larimer Referred Issue 1A, which would levy a permanent quarter-cent sales tax to pay for a detox and treatment facility for people with mental health and substance abuse issues. It would be operated by the county’s health and human services department and would be available to all county residents, as well as those in the criminal justice system.

Cory Kness, who is younger than Jim but older than Travis, is a behavioral specialist in a public school system outside Memphis, Tenn., and said his younger brother had classic signs of mental illness that only worsened as he aged.

“I would venture to say there is a large population of people in jail that are (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder), very impulsive, never learned how to manage it, and maybe picked up a gun and did something bad,” he said. “And society needs to be protected from people who make decisions like that, no doubt. I am a big believer in that—get them off the streets so everyone else is safe. But let’s work on getting them healthy.”

Travis Kness, 32, who spent time in the Marines, admitted to kidnapping his former girlfriend, Rosanna Martinez, at gunpoint July 19 as she left her job at a Fort Collins store. During the next week, authorities say, he drove to the West Coast and back before being arrested in the foothills outside Fort Collins. Martinez was found at the Kness home in Loveland July 27.

Cory and Jim Kness say they are not excusing their brother for his actions, which they said were criminal and should be punished. But they said those actions had an underlying cause that the Larimer County criminal justice system is not prepared to address.

Travis Knees lived homeless over several months during the past three years, including a two-week period when he lived near the Poudre River so he could be closer to the facility in Fort Collins where he had been ordered to take medication. He was in the county’s Alternatives to Incarceration for Individuals with Mental Health Needs program—or AIIM—after being arrested for waving a gun in a bar. His brothers said he was acting out a scene from a movie and didn’t understand that it was wrong.

Jim and Cory Kness said their brother is creative and funny, evidenced by a series of cartoons he drew that also shed light into his mental state.

“He’s one of the most naturally funny people I know. He’s very artistic and gifted in other ways. But he’s mentally ill, and a mentally ill person out there in society, not able to fend for themselves, ends up living out by a river,” Cory Kness said. “He’s trapped, and it’s really hard.”

Gary Darling, criminal justice planning manager for the county, said he and other officials hope a new treatment facility, with an accompanying outpatient treatment program, will divert people like Travis Kness from committing crimes again and again.

Ultimately, fewer people will end up in jail.

Earlier this year, while studying recidivism rates at the jail—the rate of re-offending—analysts learned that 55 percent of the people in the jail in December 2007 had a diagnosable case of mental health or substance abuse.

After crunching some numbers, analysts learned that there may be 3,600 people in the criminal justice system in Larimer who have mental illness or a substance abuse issue. And 81 percent of the time, people in the jail with both disorders will wind up coming right back.

Larimer County does not have its own detox facility, residential treatment facility or acute treatment facility for people with mental illness. Now, Larimer residents are taken to Island Grove Residential Treatment Center in Greeley—45 percent of the people in that facility are Larimer County residents, according to Cheryl Olson, a former county commissioner and member of Bridge the Gap, a group working to pass 1A.

Darling said he and others on a study committee looked at space-saving programs at the jail that are already effective, and considered how to expand them.

“We looked at what we are already doing with the AIIM program for example, and determined that we can have an impact on the jail population if we get more of these people into treatment. Even with a fairly low success rate, we can have an impact,” he said. “We won’t have an impact reducing the jail from what it is now just by this program, but we can probably keep it from growing and having to add on to the jail for a long time.”

Sheriff Jim Alderden is one skeptic, however, and an opponent of 1A.

The county budget is already short of meeting jail operating expenses, and a sales tax implemented to help pay for new construction is set to expire in 2014. Given that, Alderden said he would have preferred a tax aimed at jail costs, but said the commissioners chose not to address that.

Olson noted restrictions in the state constitution that limit ballot issues to one topic, but Alderden said he isn’t sure if that’s the reason, saying he believes it’s political.

He said he is not opposed to the idea of a mental health treatment and detox facility, but he takes issue with the scope and the stated benefits, of which he’s skeptical. He said he has not seen evidence that the county needs to go from nothing to a “Cadillac system” right away, when the jail itself isn’t fully funded.

“They are talking like this is going to solve the jail issue, and that is not the case,” he said.

He said he doesn’t dispute that the measure might push back any expansions, but that’s not the biggest problem.

“The problem isn’t needing a jail expansion, the problem is funding an existing jail,” he said. “It’s like they’re trying to keep the Titanic from going down by buying a bucket and bailing water. It ain’t gonna work.”

Olson said she understands Alderden’s concern about jail funding, but she argues the “a-ha moment” for 1A was the realization that it could reduce the amount of people who need to be in the jail in the first place. She said it costs $36,000 a year to put someone in the jail and $8,500 to put someone in treatment.

“We always knew that we were locking up people in the detention center instead of getting them the help they need. So it’s the right thing to do,” she said. “The a-ha moment is the impact on the jail. I have said for seven years, if we would figure out how to treat these people, it would be so much better.”

Darling said a facility needs to be built as soon as possible to have that impact, however.

“If the jail grows past what its capacity is, and we start getting people that we can’t get out of there, then we’re going to have to build that jail,” he said. “Plus it’s the right thing to do.”

The family of Travis Kness certainly believes the latter.

Jim Kness said if his brother had gotten help, he might have understood what he was doing was wrong.

Jim Kness knows from personal experience that people with mental illness often don’t think they are sick, but once they know, they are aware enough to realize they could use help.

“It’s like if you are fumbling around in the dark, and you don’t have light, but you aren’t sure about this thing that might come on and hurt your eyes,” he said. “But once you have it, you say, ‘I want to remember the switch, so if I ever go back in the darkness I can find it.’”

About Issue 1A

Larimer County Referred Issue 1A is the last issue on many ballots this fall (except for some neighborhood-centric issues). But supporters say it may be one of the most important.

It would levy a .25 percent sales tax—25 cents on a $100 purchase—and raise $11 million the first year to build and staff a treatment and detox facility for mental health and substance abuse.

Larimer residents would be able to walk in and seek treatment, or be referred through the criminal justice system or other methods.

Detractors, who include Sheriff Jim Alderden, say the justice system has other unmet needs, including operating expenses for the jail, that should have been included. Alderden worries that if 1A passes, it will weaken any chances for a future sales tax to pay for jail operations.