Patrick Kennedy Visits Mentally Ill Inmates Of Cook County Jail, Largest Illinois Mental Health Facility

Before he was an inmate, a middle-aged man in a tan correctional uniform heard voices and believed he was God.

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, the Rhode Island Democrat who retired from Congress in 2011, and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart listened intently as the inmate, who declined to be named, talked about living with schizophrenia in the lockup. The man attends group therapy sessions and receives other treatment inside what is now the largest mental health care provider in Illinois -- the Cook County Jail.

Kennedy, visiting Chicago for meetings related to next month's Kennedy Forum on mental illness, intellectual disabilities and addictions in Boston, toured the jail Thursday after learning the sheriff and his team devote much of the 10,000-inmate facility to mental health care. As a longtime mental health advocate, Kennedy worked with his father, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, to write and pass the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.

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