Monday Map: Caring for People with Mental Illness

by Matt Kelley · 2009-03-23 08:55:00 UTC
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This week's map comes from a new report released by the National Alliance of Mental Illness, grading the states on their overall care and treatment of people with mental illness. The situation is pretty grim: not a single state gets an A grade, and the nation's overall grade is a D.

The imprisonment - in place of treatment - of thousands of people suffering from mental illness is one reason for the low grades. From the report:

One of the most visible indicators of our mental health system’s failure is the fact that more than 450,000 Americans with a recent history of mental illness are incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. Many of these people are there for misdemeanors or crimes of survival, and their mental illness may end up prolonging their stay. When the mental health system functions poorly, the criminal justice system too often becomes the default provider of treatment and care for people with serious mental illnesses. This mode of operation is inhumane, ineffective, and expensive.

The report points to innovative programs that prevent mass incarceration of people with mental illness and help ensure that people aren't locked up without treatment for years. These solutions include crisis Intervention Teams and mental health courts specializing in handling the cases of mentally ill people charged with crimes. Improvements to the criminal justice system are vital in order to change the way we care for the mentally ill, and the report makes this fact painfully clear.

Read the executive summary and watch a video with NAMI Executive Director Mike Fitzpatrick, and download the full report here.

Matt Kelley is the Online Communications Manager at the Innocence Project and a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter @mattjkelley.
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