Mass Shooting in Maine Exposes Crisis in Mental Health Responses

The night was winding down as we approached the time for lock down. The housing unit was loud as men hollered back and forth with each other, finalizing last minute conversations or negotiations of one type or another. I was down on base, having just finished a few games of Scrabble. 

All of a sudden, another prisoner in my housing unit walked quickly towards one side of our unit. He swung his arms wildly, waving his religious text in one hand and shouting nonsensically at the same time. I tried to discern what he was saying, but it made no sense. He was shouting something about his religion, but it also sounded like he was defending his city (Detroit) and vilifying anyone who challenged either his religion or city. 

I looked around in confusion, asking a few people what was happening. The man was known in our unit as being loud and obnoxious, and even a little aggressive, but it appeared like he was experiencing a mental break. Nobody seemed to know what he was hollering about. 

I heard some other prisoners laughing and making cruel comments about the man, but everyone stayed out of his way. Even the officers, who would normally quickly respond to such a situation, stayed in the office. They had to have heard what was happening. 

The next day, the same man, still erratic and over hyper, approached a nurse who came to pass out medication to the men in segregation. I heard him aggressively demand that the nurse tell his psych he needed to see her. The nurse looked scared as officers were again absent. 

Later, the man was placed on suicide watch by his psychologist where he shouted, punched his mat, and threw his dinner food for over an hour before calming down. He was clearly experiencing a mental health crisis. 

What disturbed me about this whole situation was the lack of response by correctional officers. Yet, I don't really blame them. For more than two years now, corrections officers have been mandated to work overtime so much that I don't understand how they can possibly have a life outside of work, let alone respond appropriately to prison crises. They are stretched so thin, when crises like this happen, they sometimes stay out of the way, hoping the situation will resolve itself. 

We've seen the same overtaxing of healthcare, law enforcement, and mental health specialists outside of prison. Too many people don't want to work, yet the problems don't stop or slow down just because the workforce is short. 

I don't know if Robert Card, the man in Maine who just took the lives of at least 16 people, faced the same apathy to his mental health crises. Perhaps he, too, faced a system woefully short of people and resources. He was known to have violent and aggressive behavior and a mental health issue, but he still had access to assault rifles. He didn't get the help he needed to prevent him from harming others. I can only hope he's caught before he kills any more people.

Our country is in crisis, but it shouldn't take a mass casualty event like the one in Maine to galvanize people into doing something. I'm afraid even this tragedy won't cause any changes. Others like it haven't been enough. 

It makes me worry about what crises will finally cause changes in our prison system. The current situation is untenable as officers are quitting faster than the department can replace them. And those who stay face their own mental health crises from being forced to work so many hours. It's not only prisoners who are at risk of losing their minds.

We as a society cannot continue to hold onto our old ways of thinking and expect different results. That's insanity. We need a total rethinking of America's mental health crisis, and we need a total rethinking of America's dependency on incarceration as a solution to every problem.