Jailing the Mentally Ill

[MUSIC PLAYING]

NARRATOR: For every 100 American adults, 20 have some form of mental illness. Five have disorders classified as severe. They rarely pose a danger, but those odds increase without proper treatment.

KAREN GORMANDY: I am the mother of an adult young man who's been diagnosed with a schizoaffective disorder. Because he was an adult, the only way he could have gotten treatment is if the police came and took him away in handcuffs. And that was it.

NARRATOR: 25 states will not allow a person to be involuntarily committed unless he or she is in obvious danger, or basic needs are not being met.

DOCTOR: The disease itself carries with it a lack of insight and denial. So people say, well, I'm perfectly fine. I'm not going to get help. That's part of the disease. If you have high blood pressure and I say, you have high blood pressure, you need to take this pill, you're going to probably do it. But if you have schizophrenia, you may say, what do you mean? I'm perfectly fine.

DR. E. FULLER TORREY: Personal rights are very important. We protect people's civil liberties in this country. But we protect them so well that for many of these people who are severely mentally ill and don't know they're mentally ill, we're simply protecting their right to be homeless and on the streets or in jail. We're protecting their right to continue to be sick.

NARRATOR: Mental health funding has been declining for decades. Since 2009, states have cut more than $2 billion for mental health from their budgets.

KAREN GORMANDY: Each single part of the way where we fail somebody, we're all responsible. I think we fail people with mental illness. We give up on them, because it's just too hard.

NARRATOR: Dennis Bindell is an inmate at the Summit County Jail in Akron, Ohio.

DENNIS BINDELL: This is this close to a menage a trois as you could get—

NARRATOR: Arrested for public indecency.

DENNIS BINDELL: False arrest. I am a male stripper.

NARRATOR: Diagnosed with mania—

DENNIS BINDELL: Thank you.

NARRATOR: Bindell has a hard time controlling his thoughts.

DENNIS BINDELL: I think I'd edit that, right?

NARRATOR: He is housed in the jail's mental health pod.

GUARD: 12 cells on the upper tier, 12 on the lower—

NARRATOR: With one cell reserved for out-of-control inmates.

GUARD: This cell here is set up for four-point restraints.

Chief Gary James, who runs the jail, says nearly one in five inmates has mental health issues.

CHIEF GARY JAMES: And most of them are taking psychotropic medication.

NARRATOR: Medication is dispensed twice a day.

NURSE: A lot of Depakote, which is a mood stabilizer.

NARRATOR: And one part-time psychologist is available for counseling.

Ricky. How are you?

NARRATOR: Dr. James Orlando believes mentally ill inmates would be better off in a hospital.

DR. JAMES ORLANDO: The medication is the same medication here as it is in a psychiatric hospital. Our counselors here are just as good. But the environment here is not therapeutic.

[DOOR SLAMS]

SHERIFF DREW ALEXANDER: This is where we'd bring them.

NARRATOR: When Summit County Sheriff Drew Alexander was a police officer in Akron in the 1970s, he would take someone acting deranged to Fallsview, the state mental hospital.

SHERIFF DREW ALEXANDER: In my day, on the streets, this was automatic.

NARRATOR: But Fallsview is now Falls Village, an office park. The hospital closed as part of the deinstitutionalization movement that began in the 1960s. Akron has more mental health facilities per person than most cities, with 350 hospital beds. But across the country, the number of psychiatric hospital beds has shrunk by nearly 90%, from one bed for every 300 Americans in the 1950s to one bed for every 3,000 today.

Sheriff Alexander believes his jail has become a dumping ground for the mentally ill, who have no place else to go.

SHERIFF DREW ALEXANDER: It's almost like putting them in a dungeon and chaining them to the wall. You know, the only thing different is we try to feed them.

NARRATOR: Summit County Jail inmate Chettori Beasley hears voices. She thinks of demons.

CHETTORI BEASLEY: Growling at you all the time.

NARRATOR: She is accused of a violent crime—stabbing someone.

CHETTORI BEASLEY: I've seen a demon. I've had—I've stabbed it in the cheste.

NARRATOR: Now 38, medical records show Beasley has been treated since she was 12. She spends most of her days under the covers in her cell.

CHETTORI BEASLEY: I know I need help. Everybody keep talking about, you could get help. Where would you go to get—for to get it at?

NARRATOR: Dr. Orlando says her case illustrates why incarceration can aggravate mental illness.

DR. JAMES ORLANDO: Sort of imagine what it's got to be like, being mentally ill and being in that position, where you're trapped, literally trapped, in a small cell with your own demons. Certainly, there's no way you're going to get better under those circumstances.