Crazy, but Thats How It Goes: How Treatment of the Mentally Ill Has Changed and the Increase of Ment

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Crazy, but Thats How It Goes How Treatment of
the Mentally Ill Has Changed and the Increase of
Mentally Ill Inmates in the American Prison System
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• The Mentally Ill at the Turn of the 20th Century
• Dorothea Dix was influential in changing
  perceptions of the mentally ill
• They were subject to maltreatment due to lack of
  knowledge
• Asylums were erected all over the nation to care
  for these individuals
• The opening of asylums curbed rate of mentally
  ill inmates

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Electroshock Therapy

• This method of treatment was created in 1938
• Used extensively from its creation to approx.
  1970s
• The damage it caused was unknown at the time
• Many survivors today claim it ruined their lives

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Mentally Ill Inmates

• 24 of Oregons inmate population has a diagnosed
  mental illness
• But there are only 25 therapists to deal with
  them
• Ohio has had the greatest reforms in their
  prisons
• They have 611 therapists to deal with the 16 of
  mentally ill inmates

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The Reagan Era Deinstitutionalization

• During the Reagan administration most of the
  nations asylums were closed (deinstitutionalizati
  on)
• Between 1980 and 1995 the amount of mentally ill
  inmates rose 216
• There is a positive correlation between that
  statistic and deinstitutionalization

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What Happened After Deinstitutionalization?

• Many of those previously treated in asylums
  became homeless
• Substance abuse became very popular amongst the
  mentally ill homeless
• Also many of them wound up in prison

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Drug Treatment Programs in Prison

• The lack of treatment programs in prisons is a
  huge problem
• In the mid-1990s only 28 had treatment programs
• This creates a problem when the inmates return to
  regular society

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The Burden Placed on Prisons

• American prisons are becoming the new asylums
• This creates a burden on the already stressed
  prison budgets
• Prisons are unable to care for the mentally
  ill-its not their purpose

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What Can Be Done to Change this Trend?

• Treatment facilities need to be set up in
  communities
• There needs to be more awareness of mental
  illness
• They way prisons treat these inmates could also
  have an effect on if they return or not