In America For A Couple Years Now That Has Been A Problem

Mental illness is one problem that will most likely never go away. Our population gets bigger by the day and more and more people are being diagnosed with mental illnesses every hour. Even with this being true, we are continuing to shut down mental health facilities, decrease funding, and so on. Instead, we leave these people to their own. With the large

Around the 1970’s and 1980’s around the United States many mental hospitals were shut down. There were many reasons why they closed these Asylums was because money, and knowing that there was only about twenty county asylums were built around the country. The asylums also known as the Looney bin was established in Britain after passing in 1808 county asylum act. There were so many patients in these asylums around the world in 1955 about 558,239 severely mentally ill people in the United States were accounted for. Now in these times any mentally ill people don’t get help they just go straight to jail without proper diagnosis or treatment. People need to know these people need extreme care and treatment. Even regular people or considered the norm in today’s society eventually go crazy when they’re in prison too long. We have as much people that are mentally ill as regularly incarcerated. There is one prison in Houston Texas that does take care there mentally ill. We have about 2.2 million

Throughout the years, the United States criminal justice system has been constantly incarcerating individuals who endure from a severe mental illness. People who suffer from serious mental illness are doubtlessly to be discovered in prison. There is a significant amount of mentally ill offenders that are placed in the state and federal institutions. The mentally ill are overpopulating the prisons. The criminal justice system is a deficiency for those who can profit more from the help of mental health treatment center or psychiatric hospital by sending individuals to correctional facilities or prisons. Today’s jails and prisons are being labeled as the new mental health hospitals for the mentally ill offenders. Commonly in today’s society, it generally takes other individuals who are willing to educate and support the mentally ill person into becoming successful in life.

Cost Mental disorders, other than alcohol and substance abuse, cost U.S. society more than $204.4 billion annually. About $91 billion of that amount (based on 1994 figures) is for direct health care costs; the rest includes social services, disability payments and the expense of lost productivity. Estimates for the annual costs of some specific mental disorders:Major depression: $43.7

The United States criminal justice system has been continuously increasing incarceration among individuals who suffer from a sever mental illness. As of 2007 individuals with severe mental illness were over twice as likely to be found in prisons than in society (National Commission of Correctional Health Care, 2002, as cited in Litschge &Vaughn, 2009). The offenses that lead to their commitment in a criminal facility, in the majority of cases, derive from symptoms of their mental illness instead of deviant behavior. Our criminal justice system is failing those who would benefit more from the care of a psychiatric rehabilitation facility or psychiatric hospital by placing them in correctional facilities or prisons.

This is unacceptable and a major issue in a broken criminal justice system. Diagnosed mentally ill patients should not be in prison, they need help that only a mental health facility can offer them. There is a difference between being mentally ill and being a criminal. It is no secret that the state has used the prison system as a dumping ground for the mentally ill. Common sense would lead an observer to conclude that a prison environment is not the best place for a person who is suffering from mental illness.

One of the most controversial issues regarding the mentally ill and the prison system is the medical treatment received. According to the film, “16% of the prison population in the state of Ohio, which reflects a national average, are persons who have been diagnosed with mental illness.” Prisons began as an institution designed to rehabilitate, however, a vast majority of prisons throughout the country do not provide adequate medical care for their mentally ill inmates. However, the prisons that do possess adequate health care are most likely the first instance in which the inmates with mental illness have received any sort of treatment in their entire life. People with chronic mental illness need constant supervision which they cannot get outside of prison. Although inmates does not receive the most extensive treatment, the treatment they do receive is well beyond the treatment they would have received had they stayed out of the criminal justice system.

Each day vast amounts of people with mental disorders are being cycled through the criminal justice system. A recent study shows that approximately twenty percent of prisoners have a mental illness, and out of all of the mentally ill people alive, forty percent of them will serve some sort of jail time in their lifetime. In recent studies, it has also appeared that individuals being incarcerated have more severe types of mental illness, including psychotic disorders and major mood disorders than they did in the past. In fact, according to the American Psychiatric Association, between two and four percent of all inmates in state prisons are estimated to have a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, thirteen to nineteen percent have severe

Once released from an institution a mentally ill person, without the support of the community and much needed medication, might find themselves feeling very scared and threatened by interactions with the community. This leads us to another problem, which is crime and the mentally ill. About one thousand people in the U.S. are murdered by severely mentally ill people who are not receiving treatment. These killings are about 5% of all homicides nationwide, and help show once again how important it

What is left is that we have many citizens who are mentally ill and are not receiving treatment. However the patients who are able to receive treatment are only able to have some treatment covered. Health insurers are responsible for covering the immensely large cost of substantial treatment, a mixture of medication and therapy; since therapy is highly priced, less reliable, and time consuming; patients typically do not receive treatment for therapy. Health insurers would much rather cover medication because it is cheaper, it heals patients faster, and it is more reliable than therapy. However, medication is not made to heal, but to only coax symptoms of a mental illness (Sandberg).

Mental illnesses are extremely pricy and dangerous. The staff has to be extra cautions with mentally disabled prisoners because they are more dangerous. The prison system does not have enough money to be able to maintain high-risk prisoners. “The average cost of keeping an older inmate incarcerated is about $69,000 a year”(Regan) it’s an outrageous amount of money. A Tennessee State prison gave Dr. Regan, Alderson, and Dr. William Regan gave data on older inmates who had mental illnesses. The study focused on the population and their mental disorder and the crime committed. 671 prisoners where tested in the study and 109 people where diagnosed with a mental illness: Out of the 109 people with a mental disorder only 13% where women and 87% where men. The most common crime for both genders with a mental disorder was murder. Women who committed murder suffered from depression illness. Men who committed crime in their older age committed sex crimes and where diagnosed with dementia. Our prisons are not equipped to be able to handle mentally disable prisoners. Mentally disorder people need to be in a mental house that can help them. It is not right to incarcerate someone who is sick.

As stated by Mental Health America (MHA), “On any given day, between 300,000 and 400,000 people with mental illnesses are incarcerated in jails and prisons across the United States, and more than 500,000 people with mental illnesses are under correctional control in the community”. Mental Health Treatment in Correctional Facilities policy was put in to place on March 7, 2015 due to the ignored rights to mental health medical services that incarcerated individuals face. The policy sets a standard to how incarcerated individuals are to be treated, and protects the rights of the vulnerable individuals.

Citizens of the United States are paying to keep the mentally ill in prison, which is not benefiting them. The money to provide the United States resources for jails is coming from citizens’ own pockets. It is ultimately less expensive for the mentally ill to be put into prison rather than an asylum or treatment facility. It also costs about double to keep convicts with a mental disorder in jail, because of their “frequent flyer” habit. For example, in Washington State prisons prisoners with serious mental illnesses cost $101,653 a year while other prisoners cost approximately $30,000 a year (TACreports.org). Prisons are also facing the problem of being overcrowded, and incarcerating the mentally ill instead of putting them into asylums is only adding to this

Currently, a large percentage of those that are incarcerated suffer from some sort of mental illness. These inmates often fall through the cracks of preexisting mental health systems. According to a guide released by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (1993):

Most schizophrenics are not able to lead a productive economic life, unless under medical care. As such, the cost of treatment may be out of reach for them as they may also not qualify for a medical insurance coverage. Before the insurance companies were compelled by the government to provide insurance cover for the schizophrenics, access to treatment was very expensive and out of reach. This may have placed some financial burden on their families to meet the cost of their health care. With no proper care, they are not able to get vocational training to help them become productive members of the