(Sept. 15, 2015) Aug. 19, 2015, the severely emaciated body of Jamycheal Mitchell is found on the floor of his cell in the Hampton Roads regional jail in Portsmouth Virginia.
This came after four months of incarceration and the denial of bond. He had been ordered to a state mental hospital by the courts, but there was no room at the inn, so he stagnated, refusing treatment while his mental illness ran wild and crippled rational thoughts.
According to his Aunt, Roxanne Adams, a registered nurse, her nephew had lost sixty-five pounds during his four-month incarceration. At a hearing, she was shocked by the absence of almost all of his muscle mass.
His crime? Stealing $5.00 in food from a Seven Eleven.
Since when did a disability, in this case bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, become a capital offense?
This should not come as a surprise — Since the 1970s, we as a society have turned our backs on those suffering from mental illness.
In the mad drive to cut budgets, mental-health services were always the first to suffer cuts, and they subsequently suffered the deepest.
The powers that be counted on our silence, and our complacency in the face of their moral cowardice to slash services and throw the mentally ill by the hundreds of thousands to the streets…un-housed, unkempt, hungry and alone.
Why did we as a society allow such callous treatment to those whose very illness forbids them to seek or accept help? Again, who protested when we turned our backs to them?
Do our hearts grow cold because of the prejudice we have been taught? Hollywood and the popular media have conditioned us to fear the mentally ill homeless as if their condition is somehow contagious.
We hear politicians tell us that the mentally ill are to blame for the epidemic gun violence in our country. Yet, these are the same folks who forever deny services by their budgets to those who suffer from disorders of the mind.
Fund the treatment of the mentally ill. Demand that the city and country insists that the mentally ill be treated or those who head those departments should be asked to seek employment elsewhere.
No more excuses. No more promises.
A man that starves to death in the custody of those whose duty is to “protect and serve” is a moral blight upon us all. The time is long past due to right this moral wrong.
KEN WILLIAMS
SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA
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