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(7-20-20) In a blog last week, Genevieve Johnson, wrote about how she called the police when her husband, Bryan, was experiencing a mental health crisis. He attempted “suicide by cop” and ended up being arrested. From his jail cell, Bryan now describes the incident from his vantage point. Today’s blog is one of a series of blogs about the need to shift responsibility for individuals in crisis away from the police back to social service and the medical community. As always, I welcome your comments on my Facebook page.

Hospital Bed, Yet Jail Cell Instead

Guest blog by Bryan Johnson, currently an inmate in a Florida jail

“Pull your guns out!” I yell to the officers as I emerge from the kitchen into the dining room where they are standing.

I violently wake up and roll over to see the metal bars in front of me; concrete walls all around. I come to the realization that the nightmare is not yet over, it has just begun.

I’m serving 18 months in prison, all because I was suicidal and charged with not just one felony, but three. I have no previous convictions nor rap sheet to speak of. This is my first-time doing jail time and I don’t understand why this happened to a man who simply wanted to die.

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(7-15-20) Discussions about shifting responsibility for Americans with serious mental illnesses, who are in crisis, away from the police need to continue. Families are being torn apart when the police and criminal justice system respond to calls – often times at the request of family members  – because of a lack of adequate community social services. 

My Husband Needed Help, Instead He’s In Jail

Guest blog by Genevieve Johnson

“You can go to hell too, bitch. I hope you die! I HOPE YOU DIE! Do you see what you’ve done to me? You’ve ruined me, you’ve ruined every man you’ve ever been with. You’ve ruined these children! You bitch!”

It was August of 2018 when my husband screamed these nasty words at me as three deputies escorted him handcuffed out of our home. Beautiful family photos of better days lined every wall in our home. I knew better than to let the words my husband said in the midst of a manic episode get to me.

But they cut so deep and I could feel my face scrunch up as I tried so hard not to cry. The tears flowed anyways as my heart shattered.

I quickly composed myself to go outside to get our four children out of our minivan. They were sweaty from football and cheerleading practice. A female deputy tried to get them out of the van as quickly as possible by turning their trip into our house into a game. She didn’t want them to see their loving father being carted away in handcuffs.

This man, the one who screamed at me that he wished I would die, was not my husband of five years. He was not the man who was my best friend and rock before we became a couple. He was not the man who adopted my older two children to raise and love as his own. His illness had stolen that amazing man away from me and our children.

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(7-8-20) Discussions about how to shift responsibility for persons with serious mental illnesses away from the police and back on social services and the medical community continue to be debated. I’ve received emails from those who support my views and those who don’t. 

Long-time mental health advocate, Harvey Rosenthal, chief executive of the New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services – one of the most influential organizations that represents the rights of individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses – used the Fourth of July weekend to write about freedom for those with mental illnesses.

Promoting Liberty and Freedom: The Pathway to Dignity and True Mental Health System Reform

By Harvey Rosenthal, guest post from a different point of view.

I have always viewed the service and support that we offer to each other as ultimately about promoting and protecting freedom and liberty, or better yet liberation. Liberation from the restrictions and limitations that told and still tell us that recovery ‘happens’ for just some people instead of being expected for everyone and that have been imposed at times on us by our field, our academic institutions, our families, friends, neighbors….and ourselves.

There are a number of freedoms to aspire and commit to and, in some instances, to celebrate today.

Freedom from discrimination, devaluation and ridicule from others and from the fear, shame and self-condemnation we impose on ourselves.

Freedom from attacks by some on choice, rights and privacy protections, especially around the right to choose or refuse treatment and where it’s delivered…and the freedom to have access to meaningful legal assistance and psychiatric advance directives.

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(Editor’s note: this is the second in a series about restructuring mental health services.)

(7-3-20) The defund the police movement has sparked conversations about shifting responsibility for the seriously mentally ill away from law enforcement back where it belongs – on social services and the medical community.

This is a great opportunity for improving mental health care, but we must be realistic and answer some tough questions.

We cannot fully end all interactions between the police and courts with the seriously mentally ill. Americans with untreated serious mental illnesses can be dangerous. Involuntary commitment hearings are legal matters. I find talk about arming social workers or completely dismantling police departments counter productive. Our goal should be to create a mental health system that doesn’t rely on the police as first responders and minimizes court involvement.

Step One: If money is to be shifted from the police department budgets to mental health services, those funds should be spent directly on programs that will help reduce arrests, shootings and incarceration. While admirable, it is difficult to see how early education programs in schools about mental illnesses and community youth programs will reduce police engagement. Greater access to integrated health care, peer support, housing, Assertive Community Treatment teams, mobile crisis response teams, crisis care beds, adequately staffed drop off centers that are warm and welcoming – these are where siphoned funds should be spent.

Training Will Not Fix The Problem: I’ve always been a strong and vocal supporter of Crisis Intervention Team Training. CIT trained officers are heroic and what all police officers should aspire to be –compassionate problem solvers. No one wants RAMBO answering a mental health call. But we cannot train our way out of our mental health crisis and we can’t depend on the police to fix our patchwork system.Click to continue…

Chart courtesy of Oklahoma Watch

(Editor’s note: this is the first in a series about restructuring mental health services.)

(6-29-20) The idea that our jails and prisons are filling up with the seriously mentally ill at alarming rates because we have closed state hospitals is simplistic, according to a paper first published by Psychiatric Services and is part of the Think Bigger Do Good policy paper series which funds behavioral health research by Peg’s Foundation, the Thomas Scattergood Foundation, the Peter & Elizabeth Tower Foundation and the Patrick P. Lee Foundation.

Dr. Mark R. Munetz, the co-creator of the Sequential Intercept Model, and two of his colleagues, Natalie Bonfine and Amy Blank Wilson, write that we must consider other factors in addition to serious mental illnesses if we want to address the fact that 2.2 million Americans with mental illness are booked into jail each year and 365,000 currently are incarcerated.

Natalie Bonfine, an assistant professor in psychiatry at Northeast Ohio Medical University, is the primary author of “Meeting the Needs of Justice-Involved People With Serious Mental Illness Within Community Behavioral Health Systems.” For those unfamiliar, the Sequential Intercept Model is recognized nationally as the leading tool in identifying people with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system and finding appropriate places to intervene and get them into treatment.

The three researchers state that closing of public mental hospitals lead to “first-generation interventions” to reduce criminalization, such as pre-and post-booking diversion programs, mental health courts, specialized probation, forensic assertive community treatment teams and re-entry programs. But while these programs have shown promise, the authors write that “none has been able to achieve a sustained impact on criminal recidivism.”

Why? Because treating an individual’s mental illness is not enough.

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Photo by Markus Spiske, PEXELS

(6-16-20) In a Washington Post OP Ed yesterday, I called for shifting responsibility for the seriously mentally ill away from the police to mental health professionals and the medical community. Coincidentally, Albuquerque officials announced yesterday afternoon that it intends to do just that.

Amid calls to defund police, Albuquerque creates an alternative department

The Washington Post,  Written by Austin R. Ramsey and Meryl Kornfield 

As calls to defund law enforcement reach a fever pitch nationwide, New Mexico’s largest city is answering concerns about its police department by forming an alternative.

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller (D) announced on Monday the formation of a new public safety department designed to relieve stress on the city’s police. Instead of the police or fire departments responding to 911 calls related to inebriation, homelessness, addiction and mental health, the new division will deploy unarmed personnel made up of social workers, housing and homelessness specialists, and violence prevention coordinators.

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