'Insane': America's 3 Largest Psychiatric Facilities Are Jails [npr.org]

Alicia Doktor 4/26/184:00 AM

In jails and prisons across the United States, mental illness is prevalent and psychiatric disorders often worsen because inmates don't get the treatment they need, says journalist Alisa Roth.

In her new book Insane: America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness, Roth investigates the widespread incarceration of the mentally ill in the U.S., and what she sees as impossible burdens placed on correctional officers to act as mental health providers when they're not adequately trained.

"It's unpleasant, it's loud, it's claustrophobic," she tells NPR's All Things Considered. "You see people who are desperately sick. I mean, desperately sick. One time when I was [at the Los Angeles County jail], corrections officers came out with a man who had been strapped into a wheelchair and was bleeding from his arm because he had scratched out a piece of his own flesh."

[For more on this story by AILSA CHANG, go to https://www.npr.org/sections/h...facilities-are-jails]

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