Thursday, December 11, 2014

The misconception of Mental Illness and Prisons

On Wednesday,one of the Muckraking projects were based on overcrowded prisons. Along with the numerous amount of new facts that were presented to the entire class not only about the excessive amount of prisoners being kept behind bars but also the invalid reasoning behind it as well, wasting more money each year and vastly raising the cost of money that is purposely used to spend on each prisoner. Something Paige had pointed out certainly seemed to have widened my attention and convinced me to provide a discussion on it in this blog, the topic was:mental illness. Prisons and jails have become America's "new asylums" as the number of individuals with serious mental illness in prions and jails now continues to exceed the number in state psychiatric hospitals tenfold. Most of the mentally ill individuals in prisons/jails would have been treated in the state psychiatric hospitals in the years before the deinstitutionalization movement led to the closing of the hospitals, a trend that actually continues even today. The treatment of mentally ill individuals in prisons and jails is critical, especially since such individuals are vulnerable and often even abused while incarcerated. Untreated, their psychiatric illness often tends to get wore, and they leave prison or jail sicker than when entered. Individuals in prison and jails have every right to receive medical care, and this right pertains to serious mental illness just as it pertains to tuberculosis, diabetes, and hypertension: all, yes, physical conditions. This right to treatment has even been affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court which,fortunately, suggests the basis that mental illness IS just AS important as any physical illness. The solution to this problem would underlie in using the tactic of maintaining a functioning public mental health treatment system so that mentally ill individuals do not end up in prisons/jails which would consist of a reform of mental illness treatment laws & practices, reform jail and prison laws & practices, implement and promote jail diversion programs, use court ordered outpatient treatment, encourage cost studies, establish careful intake screening, institute mandatory release planning, and finally provide appreciation mental illness treatment. Not only would we be preventing jail/prison overcrowding and the deterioration in psychiatric condition of inmates but we would also be allowing the reduction of taxpayer costs, thus going back to the main focus of the project. -Andrea Torres Period 4

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