criminalizing the mentally ill by nubian, at blac (k) ademic--black lesbians say what? 11:59 pm / 30 April 2006
when i was younger, i used to try and hide the fact that my mother was mentally ill. when she would show up at my school to pick me up yelling obscenities at my teachers all the while hallucinating, i would tell my friends that she was acting--it was all a part of her new role that she was taking on for a hollywood film. i could get away with this, seeing that i lived in los angeles and most children my age reveled in the fact that we lived in the city where they "made the movies we saw on television."
as a child, and an embarassed child at that, i grew to hate my mother. i would hate the fact that she went in and out of mental instituions, missing my birthdays and school performances. i hated that she cursed my grandmother for being old and frail and for taking custody of my sister and i, rather than let us become pawns of the children's court system--which we eventually did anyway. i hated the fact that the medications she took to help mediate her illness, resulted in her sleeping 22 out of the 24 hours in a day. most of all, i hated the fact that she was not there for me when i needed her--when i needed to be held, to be loved, to be coddled, to be protected--her illness prohibited her from doing so.
at my tender age of 25, i have learned to forgive my mother. i realize that it is not her fault that she suffers from a mental illness. it is not her fault that she now sits in a prison cell and will be there for the rest of her life on felony charges because our healthcare system failed her. i am not mad anymore--instead i am angry with the lack of medical attention given to poor people who suffer from the disease. i am angry with the fact that poor people are seen as criminals to the state if their family cannot afford the expensive therapy, treatments, and lengthy hospital stays required in order to help patients who suffer from schizophrenia lead a balanced life.
my mother had a hard time taking her medication and it didn't help that my family did not understand the depth and serverity of her illness. we could not offer her full support, since, we all just thought she was weak and it was her fault she was sick (because black people do not suffer from mental illness--only white people do). when my mother ceased to take her medication and began to physically threaten my sister and my grandmother, we had nowhere to turn for help. all my grandmother could do was call 911, and if we were lucky, in about an hour a group of mostly white and highly aggressive policemen would come to our house and place handcuffs onto my mother and put her in jail for the state required 72 hours. they said this was the only alternative, since, my grandmother was supporting my sister and i on her already small retirement checks and medi-cal wasn't enough to pay for institutionalized help--which wasn't a better alternative either for a number of reasons (lack of therapists who were culturally sensitive was one of the problems). by default, my mother was always taken to the los angeles county jail, which houses more than 2,000 people who suffer from mental illness--making the jail, one of the largest mental institutions in the country, although it was not designed to be as such.
like my mother, a number of people who are poor and suffer from mental illness are thrown into jails without any treatment for their mental disorders. they are usually arrested for such small "crimes" such as public urination or disorderly conduct(symptoms of their illness). this phenomenon of criminalizing the mentally ill, began to surface in the early 90's, when a number of public services geared towards poor citizens were reduced and public mental hospitals were closed due to budget cuts to "save" money being funneled to support the unnecessary wars our government has initiated and supported.
clearly, placing individuals in jail who suffer from mental illness is an inappropriate and temporary remedy because most jails are not equipped to handle mentally ill inmates. for example, if an inmate acts out, they are usually placed in solitary confinement which only adds further stress to them emotionally and mentally--resulting in the mentally ill inmate causing themselves physical harm and in a majority of cases, suicide. along with solitary confinement, mentally ill patients are sometimes placed within the general population of inmates who might harrass them and cause them physical harm, since, they do not understand the multitude of their illnesses as well. in addition to the harrassment by the general population, employees of the prison industrial complex are not trained to handle mentally ill inmates. some guards have little patience when dealing with such inmates and in reaction to this, they also participate in physical harm towards the mentally ill inmate.
moreover, with the required 72 hours of detainment that is still in effect when arresting mentally ill citizens, these inmates are not inside of the jail long enough to recieve substantial treatment and they are not offered long term treatment after they are released--which only results in the person being arrested again and exposed to another cycle of abuse and neglect within the jail. in my mother's case like a number of other people, her sickness became so bad, she committed a heinous act and as a result, will spend the rest of her days in prison. if she had gotten proper attention for her illness, a family would not be missing their mother and i will not be missing mine.
we are seeing a breakdown in our mental health system which forces mentally ill citizens into the hands of the prison industrial complex. this is an appalling state of affairs and as citizens of this country, we should be disgusted that a number of prisoners are there for being sick--it is ridiculous to even fathom the idea that we lock people up because we cannot afford to give them healthcare and because the pharmaceutical industry is more interested in making money than keeping people healthy. our country does not care about the mentally ill--walk down any street in san francisco, downtown los angeles, chicago or new york and you will see what i mean. the sad thing is that, it costs us more to place mentally ill citizens into prisons than it does to treat them outside of them.
p.s. sorry for the typos and grammatical errors--i'm in the middle of writing 3 different papers and i'm pretty much brain dead
