Published: October 03, 2009 11:34 pm      

Vicious cycle of mentally ill 

This past week as I pulled up to the Star's downtown offices, I saw an all too familiar — and heart-wrenching — scene unfold.

A man, probably in his 40s, with a toboggan and sweatshirt on in 80-degree weather, sat outside a local eatery talking to himself. His eyes wandered wildly. He yelled at passing cars, seemingly having a heated argument. Within seconds, he transitioned back to looking at the cup he held, his fragile hands trembling. Moments later, he politely said hello to someone passing on the sidewalk. Showing no signs of the anger he had minutes earlier, he looked back to the road, this time flashing a broken smile.

The flash of happiness was short-lived. Two law enforcement officers arrived. They questioned the man about a disturbance call they got about his earlier actions. Some people were afraid and uncomfortable and wanted him to leave the eatery. 

In that moment, as law enforcement talked to him and decided his fate, I thought about his family. He was someone's brother. Someone's son. Someone's cousin or uncle. He was a man who obviously struggled mightily with a debilitating mental illness. 

And if he didn't respond correctly, he'd probably spend the night in a jail cell, where his mental health would no doubt worsen over the next few hours. There, he will likely get some medication to ease some of his personal anguish temporarily. But after he's released, he'll have to fend for himself ... and the medication will run out. And having no money to pay fines let alone medication, he'll likely return to that lonely cell in the days ahead when his mental illness sparks another outburst.

It's a vicious cycle. 

And it's one that communities across the country are dealing with — how to best treat the mentally ill who end up flooding the jail system.

"If your grandmother had Alzheimer's, even if she became combative, you would never put her in jail. But we do it every day with those who are mentally ill. What is the difference?" said Kristen Owen, an adult therapist at Weems Community Mental Health Center and president of the local National Alliance on Mental Illness affiliate.  

"Imagine your family member sitting in jail because they have a brain disorder," she said. "That's what we're talking about."

Owen and a group of others in the local mental health community have partnered with law enforcement, hospital social workers, attorneys and others involved to work on a solution. The group, Community Partnership for Mental Health, has been looking into the issue for about a year. They're in the process of working on grants and possible ways to fund a local crisis center — a place where mentally ill awaiting a bed in a state hospital or those without a place to go can be treated on a temporary basis. They're also looking for ways to fund training for officers on how to deal with the mentally ill.

"It's something you have to handle at the grassroots level; each community has to look at it locally," Owen said.

To illustrate the point locally, the Lauderdale County jail housed 17 inmates with mental illness from 1998-2008 who spent an average of 417 days behind bars. That's more than a year out of a 10-year span. From a financial standpoint alone — not including medical care or medication — that's a cost of $163,047 over a 10-year span spent on housing mentally ill inmates. The worst part, the housing did nothing — for the mentally ill inmate or society. If anything, it prolonged the situation and made it worse.

"These patients need to be in a medical facility, not a jail," said Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie.

"Our officers see this situation unfold all the time. And they aren't equipped to deal with it. They have two choices — either arrest them for some offense or let them go. And usually neither of those two are what's best for the individual," Sollie said.

Sollie's colleague and childhood neighbor, Sam Cochran, has been an advocate for the situation in recent years in Memphis. Cochran is retired from the Memphis Police Department where he helped develop the Crisis Intervention Team training to improve the interaction between law enforcement and the mentally ill, especially on calls in the field. It's a 40-hour training for the police officers. Cochran recently retired from the Memphis Police Department after 33-years, with the last 20 years of service as Coordinator of the Memphis Crisis Intervention Team. Other services also included supervision of Critical Incident Services, and the Hostage Negotiation Team.

Sollie and others want to try to implement a similar program here. First, they need legislative approval and funding.

Cochran will be in Meridian this week for a NAMI event hosted at MSU-Meridian. He will be speaking at a banquet on Tuesday after the Mind Matters Health Fair. Tickets are $25.

Sollie said he plans to talk to Cochran about the program and get advice. He is hopeful it is a model that can be implemented in Lauderdale County at some point.

"I know one of the hurdles is money but when you're paying for people to sit in jail, it's obviously an expense to taxpayers," Sollie said. "And the longer a person is sick, the longer they go without treatment, the worse they get. There's a cost there. And the more times they're sick, the harder it is to get well. That's really hard to quantify."

Owen said she hopes this week's NAMI event, in addition to the work of the CIT group, will help bring awareness to the issue.

She may have summed it up best when she said: "It's easy to turn a blind eye to it if it doesn't affect you. These are real people with hopes and dreams like you and me and they're a victim of their illness. It's up to the entire community to get involved."



Fredie Carmichael is editor of The Meridian Star. E-mail him at

editor@themeridianstar.com