Early last year, two suicidal patients showed up at a hospital emergency room in Pierre, S.D., seeking help. Although the incidents happened weeks apart, both patients ended up in an unexpected place: jail.
Across the country, and especially in rural areas, people in the middle of a mental health crisis are locked in a cell when a hospital bed or transportation to a hospital isn’t immediately available. The patients are transported from the ER like inmates, handcuffed in the back of police vehicles. Laws in five states — New Mexico, North and South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming — explicitly say that correctional facilities may be used for what is called a “mental health hold.” Even in states without such laws, the practice happens regularly.
“It is a terrible solution...for what is, at the end of the day, a medical crisis,” said John Snook, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national group that advocates for the severely mentally ill. Research shows that the risk for suicide, self-harm and worsening symptoms increases the longer a person is behind bars.
[For more on this story by Taylor Elizabeth Eldridge, go to https://www.themarshallproject...cy-lands-you-in-jail]
Photo: Mental health patients mingle with prison inmates at the Secure Psychiatric Unit at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord, N.H. The cages are used to contain potentially violent individuals during group therapy. NANCY WEST/NEW HAMPSHIRE CENTER FOR PUBLIC INTEREST JOURNALISM
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