Tuesday, August 11, 2009

“Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”

The New York Times has a heart-breaking story showing that the juvenile corrections systems across the country are following suit of their adult counterparts, namely in locking up more and more inmates with mental health issues due to the lack of sufficient treatment resources in the community.

From the article:

As cash-starved states slash mental health programs in communities and schools, they are increasingly relying on the juvenile corrections system to handle a generation of young offenders with psychiatric disorders. About two-thirds of the nation’s juvenile inmates — who numbered 92,854 in 2006, down from 107,000 in 1999 — have at least one mental illness, according to surveys of youth prisons, and are more in need of therapy than punishment.

“We’re seeing more and more mentally ill kids who couldn’t find community programs that were intensive enough to treat them,” said Joseph Penn, a child psychiatrist at the Texas Youth Commission. “Jails and juvenile justice facilities are the new asylums.”
The article goes on to report that a majority of states have cut funding for mental health services for mentally ill children. The worst state is Ohio, which cut their funding by some 34%. And their governor is a former prison psychologist. One would think of all people, Governor Strickland would know the value of having an adequate support system for mentally ill juveniles.

The article continues with several individual stories of young people being abused by other inmates and receiving a lot of physical corrections from staff. There are also reports of children being over-medicated as opposed to simply training the guards to deal more effectively with the mentally ill.

Towards the end, the article has this:

Census studies of child mental health professionals show chronic shortages. A 2006 study estimated that for every 100,000 youths, there were fewer than nine child psychiatrists. Dr. Penn of Texas said the state youth prison system there recently instituted a system of telepsychiatry sessions, conducting videoconferences between mental health professionals and youths being detained hundreds of miles away.

Inadequate mental health services increases recidivism. In a February report on psychiatric services at the Ohio River Valley center, Dr. Cheryl Wills, an independent mental health expert, found that officials were unnecessarily extending incarceration for youths who acted out because of their mental illnesses.
I know full well that the country is still in an economic crises, even though there have been increasing amount of signs showing that things are slowly getting better. But one has to wonder: Is there any way in which we can afford restore a sufficient amount of care for these kids? And, can we afford not to?

5 comments:

  1. "I know full well that the county is still in an economic crises, even though there have been increasing amount of signs showing that things are slowly getting better."
    Did you mean county or country?

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  2. So, what else are you going to cut to pay for it? The money has to come from somewhere. If you just print it up, you'll destroy the whole system. Taxes are already too high. Wages are stagnant, but the cost of living continues to rise, so no one has any more to give.

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  3. Good catch, Dan. Consider it corrected.

    Bill, how about using the money being spent to incarcerate these kids, with a higher staff ratio. It has been shown that outpatient and/or community based care is cheaper than inpatient or incarceration.

    Furthermore, there have been tons of studies showing that the cost of untreated mental illness is much, much more than the cost of treating it.

    To not treat mental illness would be like forcing people to play a lottery. You may not get hit, but if you do, and are a victim, the cost could be devastating financially, if not just outright lethal to the victim.

    BTW, Bill, didja notice, it wasn't about Walker? :P

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  4. Why do you think I commented? ;-)

    I agree that there needs to be wiser use of the moneys involved. Both parties, all the way down to the local level need to start acting as Americans again, and do what's right and best with what they have. The problem is that Special Interest Groups tend to get the money diverted to where it's least needed. You need a smaller ratio of inmates to staff, but the money instead goes to Administration where it gets wasted. Look at our schools and you'll see that. Until politics is suborned to spending the tax money WISELY, rather than to curry favor, it will only snowball further.

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  5. You need a smaller ratio of inmates to staff, but the money instead goes to Administration where it gets wasted.

    It's the administration costs that belie the arguments for privatization as well. That is what happened to child welfare (foster care) here in Milwaukee. They are spending more money, but less of it is getting to the kids that need it. The rest goes to pay off the seven or eight administrations that are involved.

    The county, before they lost it, was doing a better job with less money.

    ReplyDelete