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Mental Health Treatment Cheaper Than Jail

Sedona Community Center offers the Meals on Wheels Program and free meals for the needy

Sedona Community Center offers the Meals on Wheels Program and free meals for the needy

Sedona AZ (August 26, 2014) – The following is a letter to the SedonaEye.com editor:

Jail is not the answer

A significantly disproportionate number of incarcerated people are mentally ill, some severely. Often their crimes are crimes of survival—vagrancy, loitering, stealing food, panhandling. Do you know a studio apartment in Arizona costs 93 percent of an SSI or SSDI check?–making housing unaffordable for adults living with serious mental illness who rely on SSI.

I recently encountered a lovely gentleman who came to the gym to sign up. He was fit and loved to work out, but he wouldn’t have money to pay until his check came on the third. I set up a membership for him, which he paid in full when his check came. He was a veteran, well-spoken, educated—and homeless. His real problem, we saw as the days passed, was paranoia, specifically paranoid schizophrenia.

He spent a night in jail in beautiful Sedona for hanging around the AM/PM. Refused to sign in at the Community Center so he could continue having free meals there. In a disease like his, each day without medication, the paranoia is worse.

We don’t want them to wander our streets or sleep on our park benches, yet we provide little else. Is it polite genocide? Civilly make them invisible, then don’t help because they are invisible. And they die—on the street from violence, hunger, disease, or in jail with a criminal record. Perhaps the crime is society’s.

In 2006, Arizona had 35,801 people in custody, the same year we spent just $157 per capita on mental health agency service, 3.8 percent of total state spending. By FY 2005, corrections spending accounted for 10 percent of state general fund expenditures, one of the highest proportions in the nation.

Treatment is cheaper—and more effective—than punishment.

Lin Ennis
Sedona AZ
The hyperlinks are representative of my sources.
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4 Comments

  1. Ed Washburn says:

    Its disingenuous to use 2010 statistics that were compiled in 1998-2008; the stats are incomplete and lopsided.

    The SSDI figure does not take into account that the state and other agencies underwrite the cost of apartments based on the income of the applicant so whether you earn $10 or $1000 a month, you pay based on your ability not on the cost of the apartment. And the cost of Phoenix apartments has fallen drastically since this statistic was compiled, there are more apartments than applicants.

    Short? Trying to figure out your singular point. It’s convoluted and not based on facts.

    Sedona has more offers for free meals than takers. JCSVV, St Andrews, Food pantries, etc meet the local need and most if not all discard untaken or unused free food offered. Many food pantries offer fresh fruits and vegetables. There are not enough needy to justify doing more than what is now in Sedona and that is a good thing for the public/private partnership model.

    The fact that your paranoid schizophrenic was allowed to stay in the Sedona jail was a better accommodation than most. It was clean with good facilities, it offered protection and emergency services if the need arose, it was a very humane and justified response by the community. The Sedona jail is not a county or state detention center; it’s a small facility designed for the city.

    You signing the membership? Did you have the permission of the facility? If that paranoid schizophrenic had harmed a gym member your uninformed emotional decision may have caused great distress. If he is a veteran, call the VA for it has many services in place for its vets, including transportation and medicine all free of charge. Look up and write the toll free number down and use it in the future. Your vet deserved professional intervention, not your uneducated lay interference. Even considering the recent bad press, the VA offers outstanding veteran services and is fixing the mess that needs fixing. How about you volunteering hours at a VA center to support homeless and mentally ill vets like your man? That’s the public service needed by concerned citizens. That’s the right context for your concern.

    Editorial staff, please excuse the length and edit as necessary. I appreciate the opportunity to express an opinion. EW

  2. As a mental health worker, let me tell you there’s plenty of funding but a lot of poor management and lack of coordination with other agencies public or private. Needs a top down and bottom up fix because resources are there, not other options.

    I agree with both writer and comment. Time though that politics gets out of its failed mental health care and it goes back to medical control. We don’t need politicians or empathetic citizens deciding treatments or options. When government sectors got involved the doors of treatment facilities swung wide open to dump its residents instead of fixing program top down/bottom up problems. (We in healthcare recognize Vets are adequately provided for with the best national care program ever written for a nation’s veterans. FORCE VA to run and be administered properly, don’t recreate or compete with a system that is overall very good, just make it the best. The President needs to hold his people accountable not pass the buck.)

  3. Glenn says:

    The biggest problem with letting them run the streets is a lot of them don’t take the medication that is suppose to help. You hear of it all the time and until there is a system where you can give them a shot or patch like birth control system does turning them loose on the public is a problem.

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