(Apr. 10, 2015) After being arrested for stealing a cellphone, Michael Megginson, 25, has spent the last 18 months at Rikers Island, reveals the New York Times in an in-depth profile of just one of the victims of our torn mental illness treatment system (“For mentally ill inmates at Rikers Island, a cycle of jail and hospitals,” the New York Times, April 10).
A casualty of the revolving door, Megginson, like many of his peers, has cycled through a public mental health system that has proven ill-equipped and unable to manage his care, ultimately placing him within the harsh confines of a prison.
And like many other inmates with mental illness, Megginson was not able to handle the prison environment. He was “constantly involved in some kind of disturbance . . . his volatile behavior kept him behind bars.”
He fought with other inmates, was severely beaten, attempted suicide on several occasions and had over 70 confrontations with corrections officers, reports the Times. “I’m trying to save everybody from the devil with holy water,” Megginson said during one of his psychotic episodes.
Megginson’s family believes that he needs long-term hospitalization, but New York only has 52 percent of the beds necessary to meet the needs of people with severe mental illness – leaving the few beds it does have for the most severely ill patients. Even then, those patients often can’t get the long-term inpatient treatment they need.
But if the inhumanity of incarcerating people with mental illness - who are often unaware of how they ended up in jail in the first place - doesn’t sway policymakers to restore the treatment system, then perhaps the egregious cost to taxpayers, will.
People like Megginson “burn through resources, requiring services that jails had never been expected to provide,” acknowledges the New York Times. “His treatment has cost millions of dollars in public funds.” (Read the latest report on how assisted outpatient treatment can reduce these costs).
The Times echoes the Treatment Advocacy Center and a growing national outcry against incarcerating people with severe mental illness when they should be receiving treatment instead.
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