NYAPRS Note: NYAPRS extends our gratitude to Damian DePauw, who yesterday joined us to testify to the Joint Standing Legislative Committees of Corrections and Mental Health. Damian’s testimony moved everyone in the room, not only because of his willingness to share his personal story, but because he has transformed his experience into a passion for advocacy including concrete and practical recommendations for increasing the capacity to help persons with mental health diagnoses while in jails or prisons, and before entering them. Chairpersons of the respective committees Assemblyman O’Donnell and Assemblywoman Gunther continued to highlight his testimony during the proceedings, particularly as they asked direct questions of Joseph Ponte, Corrections Commissioner of NYC, and other corrections employees from whom the committees are seeking accountability and meaningful discussion about system change. Yesterday’s hearing was a sign that the Legislature will be paying increased attention to the relationship between community mental health and the criminal justice system in the upcoming season, and we anticipate collaboration with them and other advocates around Crisis Intervention Teams, the HALT Solitary Confinement Act, and bills protecting the integrity of the corrections system put forth by Assemblyman O’Donnell. Thank you to other advocates who testified yesterday and offered powerful personal accounts and concrete ways to move forward toward reform, including but not limited to, Jennifer Parish from MHASC, Jack Beck of the Correction Association of NY, and Jayette Lansbury the Criminal Justice Chair for NAMI-NYS, and Glenn Liebman of MHANYS.
Learning to Treat Prisoners with Signs of Mental Illness
Times Union; Matthew Hamilton, 11/13/2014
In December 2010, Damian DePauw realized that he was experiencing symptoms of mental illness. He was in Washington County Jail.
He asked a corrections officer for help, and was told he’d have to wait for a nurse.
The nurse told him that the psychiatrist who could diagnose him and prescribe medication was gone for the day — he’d have to wait out the weekend until the psychiatrist returned on Monday.
He made it to Sunday.
DePauw, who now works as a mental health advocate and lives in Newburgh, told legislators at a Thursday hearing on mental illness in correctional settings that he grew delusional as the weekend progressed, and finally attacked a fellow inmate. For that, he landed in a concrete and steel cell, where he slammed his head against the door until he was unconscious, and eventually ended up in state prison.
DePauw’s story was one of several that members of the Assembly’s committees on Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities and Correction heard on Thursday. They also heard from advocates and officials who emphasized the need for changes in the way inmates with mental illnesses are handled in the state’s jails and prisons.
Advocates say the problem starts from the time a mentally ill person is arrested, and often worsens as he or she travels through the criminal justice system.
Testimony highlighted how symptoms can be exacerbated by various situations. In DePauw’s case, medication wasn’t available because the jail staff was unaware of his condition.
While some inmates have better access to programs to help them cope, the system can be unkind. Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defenders Services, said when symptoms worsen, mentally ill inmates can become violent because they may annoy other inmates or act out. Violence can cause an inmate’s symptoms to worsen. From there, a prisoner can continue to spiral until he or she no longer is eligible for treatment programs.
Corrections officials say they’re doing what they can to help mentally ill inmates. Acting state Department of Corrections Commissioner Anthony Annucci said that while the state’s facilities weren’t originally built to handle the number of mentally ill prisoners they now handle, changes such as the construction of mental health units at some prisons have taken place.
But while there is some state-level training for corrections officers, not all officers are equipped to help de-escalate tense situations that can arise.
“We’ve become the de facto mental health hospital in the state,” New York City Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte said. “We’re actually getting better at this. We’re probably not good at it yet, but we’re getting better at running the mental health hospitals that none of us were hired to (work in).”
Among DePauw’s policy suggestions is training for corrections personnel in recognizing warning signs of mental illness; mandating that jail and prison staffs take seriously and treatment someone who says he is experiencing symptoms; and making sure there are records of inmates’ conditions in the jails or prisons where they’re locked up.
http://m.timesunion.com/local/article/Learning-to-treat-prisoners-with-signs-of-mental-5891924.php
NY Lawmakers Probe Care for Mentally Ill Inmates
Associated Press; Michael Virtanen, 11/13/2014
The head of the troubled New York City jail system said Thursday it’s critical to send mentally ill inmates to treatment programs instead of a lockup.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Joseph Ponte told state lawmakers that Rikers Island is poorly equipped to be a mental health treatment center. The primary goal, one he shares with the medical staff, is to keep staff and inmates safe, he said.
“Violence at Rikers Island the past five or six years has gone through the roof,” Ponte said, adding that assaults on his medical staff have tripled.
Dr. Homer Venters, head of the jail’s health services, testified alongside Ponte. He said admission medical screenings done on every incoming inmate show about 25 percent have mental illnesses, though that diagnosis applies to about 38 percent of the daily population of about 11,500. Those inmates tend to stay twice as long.
Ponte said they’ve taken steps, like limiting solitary confinement, to improve treatment at Rikers, but acknowledged many issues remain. The city also has recently established some courts, including one in Manhattan, focused on handling cases involving the mentally ill.
“We’ve become the de facto mental hospitals,” Ponte said of the jails. “Diversion is critical.”
New York City jails have come under increasing scrutiny since The Associated Press earlier this year first exposed the deaths of two seriously mentally ill inmates — an ex-Marine imprisoned in Rikers who an official said “basically baked to death” in a 101-degree cell and a diabetic inmate who sexually mutilated himself while locked alone for seven days inside a cell last fall.
Lawmakers called the joint hearing of Assembly committees on correction and mental health following these and other reports of afflicted prisoners getting inadequate care.
The hearing also examined other local jails, where suspects go while awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences, as well as the state’s prisons that house about 52,250 inmates with longer sentences.
About 9,300 state inmates have been diagnosed with a mental illness, with 2,300 considered seriously mentally ill, said Donna Hall, director of forensic services at the state Office of Mental Health, which provides treatment. She said the clinicians seldom, if ever, remove or lower those designations.
Jack Beck of the Correctional Association of New York testified that most remain in the general prison population and get limited services. Fewer illnesses now are judged serious, which would give those inmates more care and keep them from the “torture” of solitary confinement, he said.
Alicia Barazza tearfully told legislators that her 21-year-old son suffered from severe mental illness and committed suicide two weeks ago in solitary confinement at Fishkill state prison. He’d gone off his psychotropic medications and had been in crisis, she said. He was sent to prison from Albany County at 17 for third-degree arson. His mother said he’d been abused by another inmate in prison.
Corrections officials declined to comment, citing the potential of a lawsuit.
Advocates said one recurring problem is defendants not allowed by police to take their medications after they’re arrested.
Glenn Leibman of the Mental Health Association called for presumptively enrolling inmates in Medicaid so they can get needed prescriptions when they leave.
Damian DePauw, 35, said he went to Washington County Jail on an assault charge after a violent psychiatric episode. In jail, when he felt symptoms worsening, he said he told a guard he needed medicine and was told to wait for the nurse that night, who said she’d need a prescription from the jail psychiatrist three days later. Over the weekend, he became more delusional, assaulted another prisoner who had threatened him, was stripped and put into a solitary cell, where he rammed his head into the metal door repeatedly, in an effort to knock himself out, until he split open his scalp and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, he said.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/ny-lawmakers-probe-care-mentally-ill-inmates-26878665