In The Hill (6/19) “Congress Blog,” Stephanie Parker, PhD, a public voices fellow with The OpEd project, and Rosi Andrade, PhD, an associate research professor at the University of Arizona’s Southwest Institute for Research on Women, observe that people with “serious” mental illnesses “have been swept into our nation’s jails and prisons along with those without mental illness, disregarding their mental illness and discounting their need for mental health treatment.” After pointing out that “twenty percent of inmates in jails and 15 percent of inmates in state prisons are estimated to have a serious mental illness,” Parker and Andrade call for a paradigm shift “from incarceration and punishment” to treatment.
Related Links:
— “Silent epidemic: The incarceration of the seriously mentally ill,” Stephanie Parker and Rosi Andrade, The Hill, June 18, 2015.