Report faults care for mentally ill inmates

PORTLAND – Treatment of the mentally ill in county jails falls far short of what’s needed despite marginal improvements in recent years, according to an assessment by advocates for people with mental illness and their families.

Numerous recommendations for improvement generated by study commissions remain unfulfilled, according to the report by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Maine.

State officials concede that progress has been slow.

“We recognize there’s a serious need, and given all the priorities we have to serve, we’re basically attempting to bring as many resources to the problem as we can,” said Steven Sharets, mental health and criminal justice manager for the Department of Health and Human Services.

His 10-month-old position was one of the recommendations in the state’s Joint Action Plan for improving conditions for mentally ill inmates, he said.

An incident last week in the Cumberland County Jail underscored the problem.

A woman jailed for violating probation slashed her arm with a razor she was given as part of the jail’s hygiene privileges. After returning from the hospital, she pulled out the stitches while pretending to be asleep while on suicide watch.

Despite her injuries and mental illness, there were no available beds at the state’s Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, so she had to stay in jail, said Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion.

“I need beds in medical institutions to deal with these folks,” he said. “We need to move beyond coordinating and talking and planning. We need solutions.”

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill of Maine issued its report in response to a federal study last year that showed 64 percent of jail inmates nationally have mental illness and another report recommended ways to reduce demand on Maine jails but failed to mention the mentally ill.

The NAMI report points out some of the severe consequences of housing mentally ill inmates in jail. There were 11 suicides in jails and four in state prisons in the past seven years, the report said.

It calls for implementing past recommendations, including better data collection, more training for criminal-justice workers and better access to psychiatric beds.

It also renews the call for diverting mentally ill offenders into intensive treatment, which costs about 25 percent of what jail costs and yet is more effective.

“Jails were never intended to be treatment facilities for people who were seriously mentally ill, who want to cut themselves down to the bone, and they cannot provide the kind of care you need,” said Carol Carothers, executive director of NAMI Maine and the report’s author.