"I couldn't really relate to that," Peter Robinson said of his fellow inmate. "I know what loss feels like, though."
Like the other prisoner, Robinson struggles with mental illness; he has bipolar disorder and depression. The men talked for a long time. They came to focus on the message of the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.
"The things I can't, you've just got to let it go," Robinson recalled.
The two remain friends now at State Correctional Institution-Benner Township, a medium-security men's prison with about 2,000 inmates. The concrete collection of buildings stands starkly against the rolling green farmlands of central Pennsylvania.
That moment, when Robinson talked his friend through a mental health crisis, "it's something I'm proud of," he said.
It's part of Pennsylvania's innovative new approach to mental health care in prisons. Inmates and staff alike train to reach a mutual understanding about how to deal with the myriad issues surrounding mental health.
It's an approach born from necessity, after a scathing government investigation into the state's prison practices.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Jorgensen, go to http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/05/...first-aid/index.html]
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