racism & mental health

                    Is Colorado's laudable decision to take inmates with "mental illness" out of the category of inmates subject to solitary confinement [parenthetically, our position is that solitary confinement needs to be completely abolished for everyone]

 ------enough to address the pervasive and serious issues of people with "mental illness" in Colorado's prisons and jails?

               "Nationwide, people with mental health conditions constitute 64% of the jail population, according to the Federal Bureau of Prison Statistics.  
               "Black people with mental health conditions, particularly Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar disorders and other psychoses are more likely to be incarcerated than people of other races." 

See A Movement Against Racism Should Be a Movement for Mental Health
       "The Black Lives Matter movement is exploring how racial discrimination negatively affects the mental health of African Americans."   on Time.com

US Uncut

Racial  & Ethnic Health Disparities are  at the  root  of some  of  our  most  difficult and  at  this  point most  Heinous  public health  problems, including to a great extent the  mass incarceration of  people  with  "mental  illness."

Among Many Other Things, we need Even More Support for Jail Diversion for People with "Mental Illness" :
that includes Housing & Intensive Mental Health Services



Hate Takes the Bus:  A University of Oklahoma Fraternity’s Chant and the Rigidity of Racism

By Charles M. Blow  
NY Times,  March 11, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/opinion/charles-m-blow-university-of-oklahoma-fraternity-chant-rigidity-of-racism.html?_r=0

Real psychophysical injuries can result from confrontations with overt or even subtle racism. There is a real and worthy conversation taking place in this country now, particularly among young people, around the idea of microaggressions — slight, often unintended discriminatory comments or behaviors.

The idea of racial battle fatigue — that “chronic exposure to racial discrimination is analogous to the constant pressure soldiers face on the battlefield,” as Psych Central put it — is also gaining currency and exposure.

Indeed, as The Atlantic pointed out in 2013:

“A growing literature shows discrimination raises the risk of many emotional and physical problems. Discrimination has been shown to increase the risk of stress, depression, the common cold, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, breast cancer and mortality. Recently, two journals — The American Journal of Public Healthand The Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race — dedicated entire issues to the subject. These collections push us to consider how discrimination becomes what the social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger, one of the field’s leaders, terms ‘embodied inequality.’ ”

• This says nothing of the bias that can — consciously or unconsciously — influence our policies and procedures in all areas of our lives, including education, policing, the criminal justice system and employment.

Val's New Blog:  
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