Created: 7/29/2007 9:47:15 PM 
By Angela Williams First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Booker T. Oliver says looking back on his life things would have been different without help.
"To be honest with you, I'd either be in the graveyard or in prison. That's what the bottom line is," says Oliver.
Oliver received help from the Community Rehabilitation Center. The center is designed to get the mentally ill proper medication and work them back into society.
"There's a known 65,000 individuals here just in Duval County that have been diagnosed with chronic mental illness. There are probably about another 30,000 that have not been diagnosed," says CRC Clinical Director Jimmy Hicks.
Without funding they won't be diagnosed. The center receives funding from the state and the city. The facility says a trickle down of budget cuts force the city to reduce funding and the center to reduce its staff.
"We're getting the bulk of the clients because on any given day you may catch 300 people receiving services, but we just don't have the space. We just don't have the individuals to do the service," says Hicks.
As of now the center is taking it day by day and will continue trying to make a difference in the lives they can reach for now.
"Without them I don't know what we would do because like I said, people don't really respect us no way because we are mentally ill and they say you're crazy," says Oliver.
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