Being Mentally Ill is Not a Crime

Back when I was in college and having my first manic episode, I wound up in the emergency room. While there, I had to talk to a police officer. Having an encounter with law enforcement is far from unusual for those suffering from mental illness.

Had I not had the support system I did and ended up in the hospital rather than somewhere in public, I could have gone to jail -- for something totally out of my control. The two things that saved me were that I had that support and that I trusted friends and family enough to go to the hospital. Had I been acting as irrational and erratic somewhere else, instead of ending up in the hospital, there is a good chance I would have been arrested.

While I was not arrested, many people with mental illness are treated like criminals due to the symptoms of their mental illnesses. In a recent story on VOX, a mother recounts her experience of trying to get her son to the hospital and having her son shot dead by the police ("A worried mom wanted the police to take her son to the hospital. They shot him").

While one would hope this would be an isolated incident, it's not. According to the Washington Post, almost 500 people with mental illness were shot by the police in 2015 and 2016. While there are a variety of reasons for so many shootings -- decreased funding for public health, lack of training, and policies requiring police (rather than health care workers) to transport involuntary commitments to the hospital, this should still not be happening.

And, unfortunately, there seems to be little accountability for police who decide to resort to deadly force. Police are rarely prosecuted for shooting someone with mental illness, and when they are they are rarely found guilty.

Being shot is extreme, but even being arrested while exhibiting symptoms of mental illness is often unneeded and traumatic. An article on NAMI's website (Jailing People with Mental Illness) reports that two million people with mental illness are jailed each year. While jailed, people with mental illness are unlikely to get the treatment they need, and are likely to get worse.

Because of these problems, some recommend not calling the police on a friend or family member with mental illness unless they are violent and an immediate threat to her/his or another's safety. An interesting read on that topic is, "Mental Illness and Policing," from The Atlantic. The author shares many reasons, including police officers' unfamiliarity with the individual, their lack of training, and the likelihood that the individual may not comply with police instructions.

Having people with mental illness dealt with by the police is clearly a problem. While there is no silver bullet for ending this problem, I found the information below helpful: