Guide to Mental Health Treatment in the Prison System

Early last year, my family and I received the call from my fathers attorney. He had been arrested, and was being held at the regional jail, until trial for assault on a federal official. A Vietnam Veteran suffering from diabetes and cardiopulmonary ailments, he had a long history of mental disorders. My father was being treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and paranoia. He was on many medications like anti-psychotic medication, anti-hallucinatory medication, and anti-depressants, in addition to various heart medications to maintain his mental stability and physical health. We learned that he was being denied all of these medications while incarcerated.

My father is by no stretch of the imagination a good or law abiding person, but because the prison system refused to continue with his course of medication, (prescribed by the local Veterans Administration Hospital), they put his life in danger. He began to have psychotic episodes and act out. Being 57, and a below the knee amputee that had been confined to a wheelchair for 2 years, I assume that it was no problem for the correctional officers to escort him to the infirmary. There he was kept under virtual isolation, still without medication. I understand that this type of solitary confinement is necessary for the safety of staff and other inmates, if it were not for the fact that severe panic attacks and myocardial infarction's were part of my fathers medical history.

The U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections Information Center reported that in July, 1999, 16% of the incarcerated population was known to have some form of major mental illness.

In the Provision of Mental Health Care in Prisons, Special Issues in Corrections Journal (Feb 2001), it states that when a mental disorder is diagnosed an inmate may receive counseling and/or medication, however, if the mental disorder is thought by staff to be an attempt at manipulation, or a behavior problem, the inmate will be placed in segregation without treatment. At least in my father's case, this statement is a total fallacy. He had a documented 35 year record of diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders, and was still left in segregation for the duration of his incarceration without medical or psychological treatment.

In the past, inmates showing signs of mental disorders were placed in segregation, and often in restraints. Some of these inmates died without ever receiving diagnosis or treatment for their individual mental disorders. At times, when the mentally ill inmates were left in the general population, they fell prey to more dangerous inmates, and were often sodomized, beaten, or killed.

Today cases across the country involving the deaths of mentally ill inmates are still cropping up across the country. According to www.schr.org, inmates in a Buford, Georgia prison, mentally ill inmates David Strickland and Arthur Umberhand were killed after being placed in cells with dangerous convicts.

60 minutes reported on the case of Timothy Souder, a 21 year old inmate at the Southern Michigan Correctional Center. He was incarcerated on a shoplifting charge. Souder suffered from manic depression. His mother, Theresa Vaughn said that he started having symptoms as a teenager in Michigan, and later was diagnosed and received treatment for bipolar disorder.

Timothy Souder tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide while in jail, once by stabbing himself in the stomach, seven times. After an incident landed him in solitary confinement, he broke a chair, and was then restrained. Souder was restrained for periods up to 17 hours, and by the third day had developed bed sores. Timothy Souder died on August 6th, 2006 of dehydration. The entire ordeal was recorded on a surveillance camera. The tape shows his physical decline over a period of days. After his death a prison nurse was fired for failing to recognize that Souders condition had turned critical.

Robert Walsh, Clinical Psychologist gave other examples of mentally ill inmates that were classified as being behavior problems, such as one inmate who cut out his own eyes because he believed that they were an offense to God. This man was thought to be manipulating the system and acting out.

There is virtually no difference in the way mental issues are dealt with in the prison system today, as opposed to in the past. Because of the environment, staffing shortages, and lack of education for prison staff, inmates continue to be left in prison untreated. Eventually, they will either die in the system, or be released, possibly in a worse mental state than before their incarceration.