Transcriber: Iria Verdugo Reviewer: David DeRuwe
We have a problem,
and I need your help.
In April of 2014, I was running a mental health clinic in Sumter
when I got a call from the director
of the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
He asked me to come over to Columbia to discuss a few issues.
I don't know about you,
but getting a call from a prison to come down and "discuss a few issues,"
that wasn't on the top of my to-do list.
I was curious, so I went down to speak with the director,
and he told me about this decade-long class-action lawsuit
and the challenges he had with treating the mentally ill.
He asked me if I would consider leading his health care team,
and he gave me this 50-page document.
When I left that meeting, I was curious.
When I finished reading this,
I was changed.
I read about a 27-year-old mentally ill inmate
who was in solitary confinement for six years
because she cussed out and threatened staff and inmates
because they teased her
for wearing diapers due to a medical condition.
But what turned my stomach and made me really angry
was when I read about Jerome Laudman.
Jerome was a mentally retarded, schizophrenic man
who was left to die naked on a cold, concrete floor.
When they found him, he was lying in a pool of his own feces and vomit,
and he was surrounded by 15 to 20 trays of moldy food.
He hadn't had his medicine in days.
He smelled so bad that the staff refused to go help him.
They ordered inmates to pull him out of the cell
so he could go to the hospital.
Jerome died later that day of a heart attack and hypothermia.
I was enraged, and I knew I needed to do something.
You may be thinking,
"I know you're upset, but who are you,
and why did they call you in the first place?"
Well, I'm a retired command chief master sergeant
in the United States Air Force,
and I was a security policeman for 11 years.
I've been in the mental health field since the early 90s.
I was the superintendent of several military hospitals,
both stateside and overseas, in peacetime and in war.
Based on my resume and experience,
they thought I was the perfect person for this job.
They were absolutely
wrong.
You see, it didn't matter how motivated I was.
It didn't even matter how much we wanted to fix the system.
The bottom line is we needed to identify and divert the mentally ill
from coming to prison in the first place.
And for the people who were already there,
we needed to treat them
and help them transition out into the community.
I learned three things pretty quick in the prison:
that many of the mentally ill were there
because they couldn't get treatment in the community,
that prison is a horrible place
to try to treat someone with a serious mental illness,
and that without support when they left prison,
many would be right back.
We knew that there were a lot of good programs around the country,
but we weren't using them very well.
You see, the biggest gap in life is not between what we know and do not know -
it's what we know and we don't do.
I'm convinced there are three programs that we can expand today
that will correct corrections,
especially when it comes to the mentally ill.
First, one of the best programs in the country
is the Crisis Intervention Team, CIT.
CITs were developed in Memphis
after a mentally ill man was killed by police
after they responded to a call for help.
At that time, law enforcement didn't know how to deal with the mentally ill.
Imagine arriving to a situation,
and a person is yelling, aggressive, and out of control.
You have a split second to make a life-or-death decision.
But consider you're scared and confused, and your mind is not working quite right,
and there are people with guns yelling at you.
That's a dangerous combination.
With crisis intervention training,
law enforcement learned how to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental distress
and how to de-escalate a crisis to prevent injuries
to them and to people they've come in contact with.
If you've been watching the news,
there's been a lot of focus on police shootings.
Nearly half of those shootings
has involved a person with a mental illness.
Crisis intervention has been successful
in reducing injuries to law enforcement and the mentally ill by as much as 80%,
but only a small number are trained in crisis intervention.
We need to change that.
Second, diverting the mentally ill from jails and prisons
using mental health courts
has also been very effective.
People that go to mental health courts have completed misdemeanors
or nonviolent felonies, like public intoxication and trespassing,
and mental illness is their primary issue.
So instead of going to jail,
they go to a 6- to 12-month treatment program.
Judges use a combination of praise and sanctions to help them to succeed
and to fix their issues with mental illness.
In areas like Miami and San Antonio, who have large and well-funded programs,
they've saved millions of dollars and hundreds of lives since they began.
We have a great opportunity here in South Carolina
because of the 46 counties, only six use mental health courts.
Third and finally, jails and prisons have become the new asylums.
There are ten times more mentally ill people incarcerated
than there are in psychiatric hospitals.
On top of that, 90% of the people who are incarcerated
will be released in five years,
and they'll be coming right back to our communities.
If they're mentally ill and they don't get treatment,
they'll be right back in prison.
To fix that, we need to expand our re-entry programs
and to provide a warm handoff with our community mental health centers,
provide enough medicine to bridge the gap
between when they leave prison and when they get help in the community.
Right now, when a person leaves prison,
they get five days of medicine and a 30-day prescription.
It takes six weeks
to get an appointment with a mental health provider.
Many don't make that connection,
and they end up falling through the cracks.
But sometimes, sometimes, things work out.
This is Michael.
Michael has suffered with mental illness since he was a little boy.
At seventeen, he was arrested and went to jail for three years
until he was released under the youthful offender program.
He didn't do very well after he got out
and ended up homeless, sleeping on park benches.
But that wasn't the end of Michael's story.
Michael met a new parole officer by the name of Tony Garcia
and entered an intensive supervision program.
That, with the help of a Greenville rescue mission,
he got back into treatment and started taking his medicine
like he was supposed to.
Housing, treatment, medication, and people who cared
made a difference in his life.
Based on that great support and Michael's hard work,
he was nominated and received an Award for Excellence
by the governor earlier this year.
That is a far cry to where he would have ended up
without that support.
I'm convinced that one of the reasons we find ourselves where we are
is that most people don't want to spend money on criminals.
And the mentally ill, they're invisible to us.
What would you do if you had to make a decision
between spending money on children, senior citizens, or inmates?
Be honest. Which would you choose?
The truth is we're paying and we're paying big.
Treating the mentally ill in the community costs us
between US$ 8,000 and US$ 10,000 a year.
Treating that same person in jails and prisons -
US$ 30,000 to US$ 40,000 a year.
That's a classic case of "pay me now" or "pay me a whole lot more later."
When I started this talk, I asked for your help,
and here's how you can help me.
Tell your elected officials that treating the mentally ill
is important to you.
Tell them to fund crisis intervention training for our law enforcement
and support mental health court.
Tell them to fund re-entry programs for our returning citizens because if not,
a third will end up back in prison.
I'm convinced that if we identify the people that need help,
treat them in the community versus jails and prisons,
and ensure that they properly integrate back in the community,
we'll save money, reduce suffering,
and most importantly,
save lives.
With your help,
we can correct corrections.
Will you help me?