![]() In Oklahoma, I visited community clinics – outpatient clinics in the community. It is astonishing to me how difficult it can be to access mental health care in this country. On the scarcity of mental health treatment He had been there a bunch of times before, and they kept saying, "Hey, what happened? What's going on?" And the man didn't say anything until we were getting off the elevator, and then he started asking if he could be sent back to his old cell. And they kept talking to him because they knew him. He was strapped into a restraint chair for transport from the court to the jail, and I went with the officers to retrieve him and bring him back to a cell. One day when I was there, there was a man who acted up in court and was sent back to the jail. We talk about the civilian mental health care system and the criminal justice system as two separate entities really, in a lot of cases, the patients in both of them are going back and forth between the two. The officers, too, are legitimately concerned about having things thrown at them or being attacked.Īnother thing that struck me there was this sense of people cycling through. It's easy to portray these people as monsters or otherworldly, and I think we need to remember they're real people who are just not getting the treatment they need. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. ![]() ![]() Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Insane Subtitle America's Criminal Treatment of Mental Illness Author Alisa Roth ![]()
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