Prison and the mentally ill

For years, I have been telling people what E. Fuller Torrey revealed in his 2010 report and what Dr. Nasrallah wrote about in his October 2012 editorial (“Psychiatry and the politics of incarceration,” From the Editor, Current Psychiatry, October 2012, p. 4-5; http://bit.ly/1JWYa87). It has been my experience that people falsely believe the mentally ill are dangerous and unpredictable or lazy and uncooperative and therefore are properly housed in prisons. Such a false idea seems to have pervaded Americans’ thoughts about the mentally ill to such a degree that a vast educational program would be needed to change this idea.

How sad is it that a nation founded on freedom has come to this.

Roxanne Lewis, PhDAssistant Professor of Behavioral SciencesDestiny University School of Medicine and Health SciencesRodney Bay, St. Lucia

For years, I have been telling people what E. Fuller Torrey revealed in his 2010 report and what Dr. Nasrallah wrote about in his October 2012 editorial (“Psychiatry and the politics of incarceration,” From the Editor, Current Psychiatry, October 2012, p. 4-5; http://bit.ly/1JWYa87). It has been my experience that people falsely believe the mentally ill are dangerous and unpredictable or lazy and uncooperative and therefore are properly housed in prisons. Such a false idea seems to have pervaded Americans’ thoughts about the mentally ill to such a degree that a vast educational program would be needed to change this idea.

How sad is it that a nation founded on freedom has come to this.

Roxanne Lewis, PhDAssistant Professor of Behavioral SciencesDestiny University School of Medicine and Health SciencesRodney Bay, St. Lucia

For years, I have been telling people what E. Fuller Torrey revealed in his 2010 report and what Dr. Nasrallah wrote about in his October 2012 editorial (“Psychiatry and the politics of incarceration,” From the Editor, Current Psychiatry, October 2012, p. 4-5; http://bit.ly/1JWYa87). It has been my experience that people falsely believe the mentally ill are dangerous and unpredictable or lazy and uncooperative and therefore are properly housed in prisons. Such a false idea seems to have pervaded Americans’ thoughts about the mentally ill to such a degree that a vast educational program would be needed to change this idea.

How sad is it that a nation founded on freedom has come to this.

Roxanne Lewis, PhDAssistant Professor of Behavioral SciencesDestiny University School of Medicine and Health SciencesRodney Bay, St. Lucia