Decriminalizing Mental Illness - TIME MAGAZINE

Thanks to Mike over at Corr Sent for everything he's got up today. A special note though to this article in Time Magazine that talks about the difficult situation we are in when it comes to locking up people who have mental illness. We have the luxury these days of good medication that works, as long as people are taking their meds for one or can afford them for the other. We have people doing time that are going to get out and follow the same downward spiral again and again. We do have to do something different I just wish our legislators and policy makers would see that. For every session we wait until "next session" hundreds of people are suffering in jails and prisons when they should be under a doctor's care not a prison guards'.

"Psycho." "Freak." "Jason from the horror movie." These are the answers that psychologist Habsi Kaba gets from Miami police officers when asked to describe people with mental illness. Such stereotypes are surprisingly common, says Kaba, and not just within law enforcement. But these misconceptions are especially dangerous when they're held by police, who are often forced to make split-second, life-or-death decisions about mentally ill suspects. "The worst thing you can have is power and lack of knowledge," Kaba says.

Just ask Mike, 31, who knows firsthand. Mike suffers from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression. Since the age of 17, the Los Angeles native has been repeatedly arrested during psychosis for nuisance crimes like disturbing the peace, only to serve his time, fall off his medication and get arrested again. On three separate occasions, his hallucinations were so severe he tried to commit suicide by provoking the police to shoot him. Though he is receiving treatment, rising health care costs and declining federal help mean Mike will likely end up in jail again.

L.A. Police Lieutenant Richard Wall told Mike's story to members of the House Judiciary Committee in March, in support of the 2007 Second Chance Act, which aims to reduce recidivism, in part with better mental health treatment for prisoners returning to society. Prisons, Wall testified, have become the nation's "de facto" mental health care provider. According to the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, there are currently 1.25 million inmates like Mike, with debilitating disorders ranging from schizophrenia to post-traumatic stress disorder, abandoned in the U.S. prison system instead of receiving treatment in hospitals. Read the Article Here