The national issue of criminalizing our mentally ill

[Jilly_in_VA]

Biya Belayneh was already clinically diagnosed with schizophrenia, hypermania and bipolar disorder when he was wrongfully accused of assaulting a cellmate in jail. The allegation put him in solitary confinement in Maryland's Montgomery County Correctional Facility for a year.

By the time he was cleared of all charges for assaulting his cellmate and released from solitary confinement in 2019, his mental health had deteriorated considerably, according to Tizita Belachew, Belayneh's mother.

"He was worse than when he got in," Belachew told ABC News. "More isolated."

The mental health care system in the United States is dysfunctional, according to law enforcement and mental health care advocates. One result of that is people suffering from mental illnesses are often being incarcerated and deteriorating behind bars, says Sheriff Tony Thompson of Iowa's Black Hawk County Sheriff's Office.

"We're the greatest country in the world, but we leave people behind and then we pretend like they don't exist," Thompson told ABC News. "And we cannot simply arrest our way out of this problem."

https://abcnews.go.com/US/national-issue-criminalizing-mentally-ill/story?id=106324105

We need a forum here for Law and Criminal Justice. Two stories I posted today would fit better there.

[Phoenix61]

1. Closing state mental health facilities with the

“plan” communities would provide care for those individuals has caused irreparable harm to so many.

[Wicked Blue]

2. What truly appalls me is that Montgomery County MD is one of the wealthiest

counties in the U.S. They should be able to afford a mental health infrastructure that properly cares for and treats the mentally ill. But they do not.

They continue to lock up people who are having mental health issues. Why? because there aren't enough places to put them. Hospital ERs are overcrowded, and even trauma patients may need to wait a day or more for an available bed. there may also be long waits for placements in psychiatric hospitals. Or they may be shuttled to a hospital that places them in a locked ward with mentally ill people who are accused of crimes. This happened to a friend of mine, who was terrified for her safety. She was moved after a day or so, but it should never have happened.

Montgomery County's ERs will also discharge some people with mental health issues, at their own request. This happened to a person I know. And the county's so called mental health crisis response team sometimes doesn't answer calls, or tries to discourage callers from requesting assistance.

If Montgomery County's mental health care is mediocre, I can't even imagine what less-affluent communities are doing.