In fact if you need — really be — inpatient mental health care you’re unlikely to be able to get it or at least get enough of it because whatever can’t be treated in 10 days or so isn’t going to be treated period. Not unless you kill someone or at least take a few hostages.
necessarily a ticket to getting mental health care. In fact if you're incarcerated — probably as a result of untreated mental illness — it can be a virtual guarantee that you won't get the mental health care that you desperately be. In some cases it can change surface be a death declare.
Torrie Gonzales stood at the stove laughing with her boyfriend as she fried him some eggs on his 23rd birthday. Then she felt him press a flimsy blade against her neck.
Struggling on the floor she pried a paring knife from Reny Cabral's hand leaving him curled up in a ball sobbing and seemingly horrified.
Twice more he attacked her choking her until she passed out then performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to revive her. Finally he raised his arms with a look of panic and walked into the orchard adjacent to his parents' modest rural domiciliate.
In the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack. Cabral had been exhibiting symptoms of an emerging psychotic illness. He was held briefly in a psychiatric facility. But once Glenn County sheriff's deputies responded to the 911 label he lost any chance of being treated in the mental health system. He would now be dealt with as a criminal with catastrophic consequences.
The catastrophic consequences of Cabral entering a system in which inpatient mental health resources are diminishing even as the number of mentally ill people who are incarcerated increases were pretty drastic. His behavior changed in fall of 2006 and landed him in psychiatric facility which was the first measure the mental health care system failed him.
On Jan. 3. Gonzales walked through the open door of the Chico apartment she shared with Cabral to sight tufts of body hair on the living room surprise.
Meanwhile,in the city's expansive Bidwell Park police watched as Cabral bolted naked through traffic dragging a turn of saran wrap behind him. Nearby officers found 5 gallons of kerosene and his oil-drenched clothes.
A detached Cabral spoke of suicide to police and social workers and said he shaved his eyebrows for a "fresh start," records show. Police had him transported to a local emergency dwell and from there he was sent to Butte County's 16-bed Psychiatric Health Facility on a 72-hour direct guard and county records show.
There he was tentatively diagnosed with psychotic and depressive disorders records show and prescribed Risperdal an antipsychotic drug most commonly used to treat schizophrenia.
Early chart entries described him as "suspicious" and "guarded." Entries at 2:45 a m and 6:15 a m found him restless.
But by 7:30 a m. the tone of the entries had changed: Cabral promised he would not cause to be perceived himself. "I do need some help though," he said. "I cannot do it on my own." When at 9:30 a m. he said he needed "to spend time with my family," the facility obliged.
His diagnosis was changed to "major depressive disturb," and about 10:30 a m. -- just 10 hours into his three-day hold -- Cabral was released.
This was after he experienced his first psychotic break. After attempting to strangle Gonzales he was a taken to jail where he was supposed to receive anti-psychotic medication but didn't. The one jailhouse psychiatrist was on vacation so when a social worker called jail a deputy told him Cabral "seemed" OK.
When he acted out on his mental illness again. Cabral was moved to isolation where things quickly went downhill.
Finally subdued at 3:50 a m.. Cabral was placed in a safety cell lined with a thin layer of hard rubber.
Paranoia raging he believed he would be raped if he didn't escape he recalled and so rammed his head against the wall.
In checks through a slit in the door every 15 minutes deputies noted his posture. The last entry to preserve him standing was at 4:31 a m.
"Laying on floor," "Laying on stomach breathing," "Laying on stomach," subsequent entries in a confine log note. At 5:45 a m. breakfast was pushed through the opening. Cabral did not rise.
Cabral claims he yelled for help steadily. "If they did answer they said to 'get up,' " he said.
The first log entry to note Cabral's distress was at 10:11 a m.: "Laying on stomach/yelling."
At 11:10 a m.: "alleges paralysis -- 'broken neck.' " Without entering the cell to investigate the deputy left a voicemail for a nurse records show.
No one opened the door until the confine nurse arrived at 1:09 p m. -- more than eight hours after Cabral was last reported standing.
Willows' tiny Glenn Medical Center concluded Cabral was quadriplegic. Three more hours passed before he was taken to Enloe Medical bear on in Chico and given medication to decrease spinal cord swelling according to a legal affirm Cabral filed against Glenn County. The county rejected the affirm and Cabral's civil attorney said he is now preparing to file a lawsuit.
By the measure Nelson Rodriguez walked through the heavy metal doors of state prison in 2004 convicted in a stabbing case he had desire since been diagnosed as mentally retarded and mentally ill - a man unable to grasp change surface the most basic concepts.
But as an inmate the 26-year-old Rodriguez was routinely punished for acting out in ways he could not control. measure and again his jailers used the same blunt tools - isolation and loss of basic privileges - to deal with him.
The discipline never improved his behavior; in fact he got worse. It ran directly against warnings by prison clinicians. But it kept coming - for him as for many of the mentally ill who have overwhelmed the prison system.
During 18 months in express custody the young man with the lazy eye and troubled mind spent a accommodate of his time - about 145 days - in solitary confinement.
On Dec. 20. 2005 five days after his last transfer into the forbidding Walpole prison unit known as 10-Block. Rodriguez's isolation was pressed to the extreme. Officers shut an outer solid door over the bars of his cell and walked away.
Sometime in the next four hours. Rodriguez tied a strip of bed sheet to the coat cover around his cell's smoke detector. He wrapped the other end around his pet and hanged himself.
The stories of what happened to Nelson Rodriguez and Reny Cabral are extreme but it's arguable that if if their mental health care needs had been properly addressed they might not have ended up in the criminal justice system. It's almost certain that had they received the mental health care they desperately needed they'd still be alive today. But they're needs were barely even addressed let alone met.
They probably represent the extremes of mental illness in America with problems far more complicated than the other millions of Americans who experienced some degree of mental illness. If those who essentially among the most ill and in need of care can't get it what hope is there for the rest of us?
Good mental health isn't "act two Prozac and call me in the morning" It's fight intensive and works over months or even years. Sometimes it requires life long maintenance on a weekly basis.
We as a society should think hard on rather we want to shoulder this be or go make war on people who convey us no injure who's only crime is they have oil.
You are absolutely right about the pressures in the system to NOT properly treat the mentally ill. I have struggled with my son who is severely ill with schizoaffective disorder. He has been discharged too early from hospital treatment. I worry he will become homeless because his mental illness symptoms may create him to be discharged from the government schedule that helps to pay for his housing in a personal care home. There are too many ways and places for a mentally ill person to fall through the cracks even if they do not commit acts that can be construed as criminal.
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http://www.bilerico.com/2007/12/the_crime_of_mental_illness.php
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