Growing Number of Mentally Ill Inmates

In "The Gazette of Politics and Business" June 12,2009 there is a front page article entitled "Growing numbers of mentally ill inmates struggle with inadequate treatment". A therapist at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility talked about her facility being a "revolving door. When inmates are released back into the the community, there often is not a strong support system of family or public programs to help them, and they revert to their prior behavior."

One can only point to the lack of vision and failed policies of the Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration over the last two decades. The Administration has held in check a moratorium on the development of affordable housing for individuals with psychiatric disabilities since its inception in 2001. The Administration then wonders why jails, emergency rooms and homeless shelters, and, most unfortunately, morgues have been flooded with individuals with severe psychiatric disabilities since then. Couple that with a de-emphasis on psychosocial programming that had demonstrated results in helping people stabilize and improve in their community settings and you have the makings of the perfect storm for increasing, inappropriate incarcerations as highlighted in The Gazette article.

The Administration instead focuses on the concept of "Recovery" which they clearly don't understand, Evidence Based Practices in lieu of practical solutions which have historically been proven to work and the platitudes of their "Transformation Grant" process, which has resulted in little but hot air. Until the Administration focuses on a real-world solution to the support of people with psychiatric disabilities and begins to develop a cogent vision of how the system works, the problems at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility will continue to escalate.

I'm not optimistic.