Jails and prisons have become America’s “new asylums” for the seriously mentally ill, a new survey concludes.
This situation was caused by the closing of mental hospitals and the failure to provide adequate community support, according to a joint survey by the Treatment Advocacy Center.
“The number of individuals with serious mental illness in prisons and jails now exceeds the number in state psychiatric hospitals tenfold,” the center’s April 2014 report stated.
The Los Angeles County Jail is de facto the largest “mental institution” in California and most of the time is in the running for the dubious honor of being the largest psychiatric institution in the nation, the center said.
The survey reported the increase of inmates with mental illness in California state prisons “from 19 percent in 2007 to 25 percent in 2012,” according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
“From the 1830s to the 1960s, we confined such individuals in hospitals, in large part because there were no effective treatments available. Now that we have effective treatment available, we continue to confine these individuals but in prisons and jails where the treatments are largely not available,” the report says.
“We characterize seriously mentally ill individuals as having a thinking disorder, but surely it is no worse than our own.”
The report cited a 2013 New York Times story saying the suicide rate in California prisons is twice the national average.
On a recent visit to San Quentin’s mental health unit, the researcher reported he had to wear a protective suit and full mask to protect him from body fluids that might be thrown at him.
The survey cautioned that when released from jail, mentally ill inmates receive no aftercare.
One thing the survey cited that would improve the situation is the widespread use of assisted outpatient treatment (AOT), known as Laura’s Law, which has the potential to decrease the number of mentally ill people who end up in jails.
State law requires a judge’s approval before involuntary treatment is initiated. Such treatment requires that the inmate “is gravely disabled and lacks the capacity to consent to or refuse treatment with psychiatric medications” or “is a danger to self or others if not medicated.”
The Advocacy Center strongly recommends appropriate treatment be provided for prison and jail inmates with serious mental illness.
