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(July 28, 2014) In my experience, being poor, homeless and African-American landed me in jail instead of in psychiatric treatment.

I developed schizophrenia at age 25 and was put on medication. But shortly thereafter I stopped taking medicine because I was gaining a lot of weight and felt tired all the time. I abandoned my middle-class family and moved into my own house. But without my medication I was unable to take care of myself. My house deteriorated to the point where ants filled the kitchen. I wasn’t able to take care of myself so I thought it would be better to just leave the house. When I eventually decided to return home, the door was locked. I was homeless.

My voices told me I need to get out of town fast. So I climbed on top of a train that was halted for the evening, planning to catch a ride. Someone saw me and called the police. When the police came they didn't even talk to me. If they had spoken to me, they would have known that I was acting on my voices and in the middle of a psychotic episode.

They would have known immediately that I belonged in a psychiatric hospital, not a jail - which is where they took me. For the next 10 days I was with sex workers, a bank robber and a murderer. I was also still off my medicine, but nobody asked if I needed medicine and no doctor came to give me a psychiatric evaluation.

When I am off medicine I have a quick temper so it wasn't long before I got into my first fight inside the jail. I stood in the face of another inmate and told her she was taking too much of the mirror. It never would have happened if I had been on my medicine. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor fighting with the ladies cheering us on.

This might never have happened if the criminal justice system didn't assume that black homeless people are criminals, when actually a lot of us just need treatment.

SAKEENAH FRANCIS
Author of Love's All That Makes Sense
Living with Schizophrenia