It was an early December evening in Houston, Texas. Rose, who is 57, and her daughter Anna, 31, were tucked into the privacy of the apartment they shared. They were arguing, as family members often do. Soon, the difference of opinion turned into a fight. Anna, in exasperation, threw a dinner plate down too hard on the family table. The plate bounced up and hit her mother’s nose. Rose began to bleed, and due to blood thinner medications, her nose didn’t stop bleeding. Out of an abundance of caution, Rose dialed 911 and asked for medical help, reported Current Affairs.
Medical help did come—but so did three armed, uniformed
police officers. As Rose received attention for her nose, officers asked her a
series of questions. She answered honestly: yes, her nose was hurting, but she
didn’t need an ambulance. No, her daughter didn’t mean to hurt her, it was an
accident. She didn’t fault her daughter Anna, who suffers from bipolar disorder
and schizophrenia and sometimes loses control of her emotions. Rose didn’t want
her daughter arrested; that wasn’t why she called. An arrest would only hurt
her daughter.
But the police didn’t listen to Rose’s wishes. They arrested
Anna. And the familiar nightmare began.
An arrest for anyone, let alone someone with mental health
issues, is deeply traumatic and violent. Anna, a young woman in need of help,
was forced into the back of a police car. The cuffs were too tight and the air
in the car too stale. She was then held in a cage, sitting on a cold cement
bench with a room full of strangers for more than 18 hours as she waited to see
a magistrate judge. The walls had no clocks and the guards didn’t answer simple
questions. Anna was terrified.
Aside from the emotional toll, criminalization of mental
health is also enormously costly. Beyond the over $100 billion taxpayers
spend on “solutions” that only make matters worse (i.e. de-escalation
and racial bias training for police; prosecution, prison, and supervision; and
court-mandated treatment), families have to pay money they can’t afford to bail
their loved ones out of jail. Rose had to scrape together the money to get Anna
free. Still, after Rose picked her up, they both thought at least the worst was
over. Anna was safe at home. Rose, who lives with a variety of health issues,
had her primary caretaker back. The next morning they would figure out a way to
get through this together.
Unfortunately for Anna, Rose, and so many others, the
criminalization of mental health issues also separates families. Neither Rose
nor Anna knew that a nameless prosecutor working the bond docket that night had
asked—as is routine—for an order of protection, a court order that meant Anna
couldn’t be around her mother and therefore couldn’t go home. Nobody knew that
Rose didn’t want that order in place because nobody asked her—she would have
told anyone who’d listen that she didn’t. But one week later, a police officer
knocked on the door, asked Rose if Anna was home, then woke Anna up in her own
bed and handcuffed her for being in violation of a court order. The arresting
officer’s body camera captured Rose’s frantic pleas as her daughter was once
again escorted to a police car. The last thing that can be heard is Rose saying
she has no idea where she will get the money to make a second bond.
Such criminalization of mental health issues is oppressive.
Rose spent more than six months pleading with prosecutors and state-sponsored
social workers to let the matter go, drop the charges, and send her daughter
home. In total, she spoke with three prosecutors and two defense attorneys in
an attempt to unwind both of Anna’s criminal cases. Rose was without her
daughter and primary caretaker for the better part of nine months. If you
asked the police or the prosecutors, they would tell you that Rose was the
victim here. Rose would tell you that it’s true—but the culprit wasn’t her
daughter. Rose would say that she was the victim of an inappropriate social
response to a mental health crisis and society’s over-reliance on police to
intervene in every social issue.
When people hear the words “defund the police,” many think
anarchy. But as advocates, scholars, and activists have been explaining in
considerable detail for decades, defunding
the police really means greater public health and safety, more
investment in robust community health responses, and trained professionals
responding with care to mental health crises. We, as a society, are limited by
what we are used to—the “normal” way of doing things, in other words. “Normal,”
in turn, tends to get associated with words and concepts like “good,”
“acceptable,” and “reasonable.” In the context of the criminalization of mental
health issues, however, “normal” really just means frequent and cruel. We can’t
claim to care about human beings, about rational policy, about fiscal
responsibility, or about health and safety and at the same time claim that what
happened to Rose and Anna is normal.
Problems that arise from mental health diagnoses are
complex, and require medical professionals and social workers who approach the
work from a place of trauma-informed care, sensitivity, and help. They need
to have
a broader and deeper understanding of appropriate responses, services,
and interventions. Instead we invest near-exclusively in criminal enforcement,
armed officers, jails, and prisons. The complexities surrounding crises in
mental health call for a public health response. And calls to help people
experiencing mental health crises can be more safely and effectively addressed
by community organizations and non-law enforcement responders, as shown in
a growing
number of cities and states. Getting people the care and services they
need is public safety—it is crime prevention. There are
ample models of non-police response around the country that work. If these
models became the norm instead of the exception, we could save taxpayer money,
families’ trauma and heartbreak, and yes, Black lives.
I can relate to the desire for normal. There is a comfort in
the status quo. As I sit here in front of my laptop—which is currently my
office, the kids’ school, our church, and my window into the homes of friends
who I miss dearly—I can’t help but wish that I had my old life back. The
one where I could come, go, and relate freely to people. I miss restaurants and
movies. I miss dropping my kids off at school and picking them up at the end of
the day. I miss what I took for granted. I miss normal.
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Particularly, low-income males with histories of mental illness have a far higher likelihood of being locked up than low-income men without such histories. For low-income males in South Carolina, the cumulative chance of imprisonment at a particular age is shown in Figure 1 separately for those with and without a history of mental illness. At age 24, low-income males with past histories of mental illness (shown in blue) were nearly three times more likely to have been imprisoned than those who had never received a diagnosis (depicted in red). To put it another way, 80 percent of low-income men who did jail time before the age of 21 had a mental health diagnosis when they were teenagers.
A therapist for anxiety is a mental health professional who specializes in helping people who are struggling with anxiety. Anxiety is a common mental health issue that can cause feelings of worry, fear, and nervousness that can interfere with daily life. A therapist who specializes in anxiety can provide support and guidance to help individuals manage their anxiety symptoms and improve their quality of life.
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