Jim McNish was sitting at a meeting of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill when a woman turned around and said she was worried about her schizophrenic son.

It was 1996, still the dark ages for the severely mentally ill and law enforcement.

"It was a tragedy," McNish said. "He needed to be committed for treatment but nobody went to pick him up. So he killed his brother and his father."

McNish, himself the father of a mentally ill daughter, said he finagled an invitation to the Kane County Chiefs of Police meeting to talk about a protocol for dealing with the mentally ill.

"I said, 'We can do better than this.' And chief judge at the time, Peter Grometer, said, 'I believe we can,' " McNish said.

McNish and the late Norma Piazza, whose mentally ill son was involved in the shooting of her other son and husband, worked to change state laws to make involuntary hospitalization easier for severely mentally ill patients.

But McNish also was behind the creation of a Treatment Alternative Court in Kane County. The alternative court helps a person with mental illness – who is involved in misdemeanor, nonviolent crimes – get treatment, medication and support – instead of jail.

"They don't belong in jail," McNish said. "When they're in jail, they cost the county money, they cost law enforcement time. It's a great waste of time and brings no help to the seriously mentally ill."

Kane County's was the first in 2004 and is now one of 13 in the state. Its protocol, created by about three dozen professionals, just went through its third update.

McNish of Geneva was also the driving force behind Crisis Intervention Training for police officers.

Campton Hills Police Chief Daniel Hoffman said he is a believer in the training because police frequently come into contact with people suffering from mental illness.

"It happened to me the first week on the job," Hoffman said. "It happens all the time."

When Hoffman was a lieutenant on the Aurora Police Department in 2006, he sent eight officers to the training. They came back and said it was "awesome."

"It was to get officers to recognize mental illness and mental impairment and be able to deal with it instead of arresting the person," Hoffman said. "If you do not know how to de-escalate the situation and use hands-on physical force, you can aggravate the situation. It's for the officers' own protection and citizens' own protection that we be trained in this and have knowledge of this."

Though McNish is modest about his contributions, Hoffman credits him for pushing for the training and the changes in how police and the courts deal with the mentally ill.

"If it wasn't for Jim McNish, none of this would have happened," Hoffman said.

The court was initially funded by a federal grant that is now starting to run out, McNish said. The organization is trying to raise money to cover its $52,000 annual budget.

• • •

Kane County Circuit Court Judge Timothy Sheldon holds alternative court every Wednesday afternoon. People who come to Sheldon's alternative court suffer from depression, bipolar disorder, Asperger's syndrome, schizoaffective disorder and personality disorders.

"When we encounter them in criminal court, we find that treating them and helping them from re-offending is a much more humane way of handling these problems," Sheldon said. "It's more cost-effective for society."

The court's goal is to get them into treatment and supervise them for up to 24 months, and to train them in coping skills so they don't break the law again.

Sheldon said it was a win-win situation.

The court has been seeing 10 people but can handle up to 15 at a time. They document their cooperation with service providers and, as they improve, their court appearances go from once a week to every other week, to once a month, then every other month until they graduate out of the program.

Sheldon made it clear the alternative court is just for nonviolent misdemeanor offenders who are mentally ill.

"These people are not violent like the person we just saw ... who committed horribly violent crimes," Sheldon said, referring to the man accused in the shooting rampage in Tucson in which six people were killed and U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head. "Their crimes are shoplifting. Violent crime is beyond us."

• • •

The local chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill was formed by two couples who met to form the local chapter in 1993, Jim and Diana McNish and Phyllis and Paul Graeser.

The impetus was the mental illness of their own children.

McNish, 79, said when his daughter was 15, she became so bizarre in her behavior, they were afraid she was on drugs.

"We were living in Toronto at the time and my wife called and we took her to the emergency room," McNish said. "The doctor came out and said, 'We've got bad news for you, Jim. She's not on dope.' "

She was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a form of mental illness that causes both a loss of contact with reality and mood problems, McNish said.

"We thought we had drawn the short straw and we would just do our best," McNish said.

McNish's company transferred him to the U.S. and the family moved to Geneva.

"And then we were introduced to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill," McNish said. "They were family members of people who were mentally ill, trying to develop educational programs so if someone was suddenly afflicted, the family could get a 12-week training course to talk about various disorders."

Phyllis Graeser, 75, of Geneva, said she and her late husband were involved because their daughter became so seriously depressed, she dropped out of high school. The family hid knives so she would not hurt herself.

"She had extreme clinical depression," Graeser said. "I'm just lucky I still have her because at one point, she was suicidal."

Graeser said it is also important to train teachers to recognize mental illness in students. The organization will be offering a teachers institute training next month.

"This was a very quiet girl who felt isolated and did not want to interact with people," Graeser said of her daughter. "I do not blame the teachers at her junior or senior high schools in Geneva. Who is going to notice a little girl who is quiet, sits in the back and gets good grades? Their attention is going to be with children who are acting up."

Graeser and other NAMI members said people often have the wrong idea about mental illness. The image in popular culture – in movies such as "Psycho" and "The Silence of the Lambs" – occurs in a small percentage. They said most people with mental illness never hurt anyone.

• • •

Jack Hazel, 75, of St. Charles, who also serves on NAMI's board, offered his son as a case in point.

"My son is on Social Security, is able to live in his own apartment, but not work or handle the pressure of a job," Hazel said. "And that is the way with most mentally ill people – not how they are portrayed in films as monsters and irrational. Most mentally ill are timid and shy and stay to themselves and are afraid of everybody else."

Hazel said good treatment programs more than pay for themselves.

"It makes money because the people being treated are not in jail or prison and not roaming the streets," Hazel said. "They are, in most cases, holding jobs and contributing to society."

Hazel took the alternative court's 10 current cases as an example.

"If they were sitting in jail, it would cost $75 a day. And if they were in for 30 days, that's $2,200 a month," Hazel said. "By having those 10 receiving treatment, the county is being saved $750 a day. Treatment costs a 10th of that."

More information

Who: National Alliance for the Mentally Ill serving DeKalb, Kendall and Southern Kane counties
What: Family to family class
When: 6:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesdays Feb. 15 to May 4
Where: Provena Mercy Medical Center, 1325 N. Highland Ave., Aurora
More info: http://namidkk.org/
For teachers: Student Depression and Suicide, Institute Day 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday Feb. 25, also at Mercy
To register: www.kaneroe.org/