How does a Mental illness start?

Some of you’s probably heard my story here it is for those that have not.  It was nineteen eighty seven and I was in prison waiting for my appeal to happen.  I knew I would get out once my appeal was finished.  The reason was the Judge did not give me the law and everyone has a right to the law.  She wanted me to do time that is why she did not give me an appeal bond.  The appeal lasted two years.  That was on my mind also so was they had just moved be to east wing in the prison I did not want to go.  I know they had more freedom and wore street clothes but all that did not matter to me.  I had my friends in south wing and I was happy as far as being in prison goes.  I and a friend ran a gambling house it was just for fun for me.  It passed time and I did not lose any money.

I took the gambling house to east wing with me.  I had other problems going on at the same time a guy that I later found out I had just met a couple of times was going on the outside saying I was a snitch and that is something a person did not want going on. I had finished an accounting course and was now taking computer programing there.  I raised the limit on my gambling house and a guard I knew wrote me up.  I later found out he did it to save me he thought so I did not get hurt although at the time I was angry that he wrote me up. In computer class I had just been made a teacher assistant because I had finished my work early.
All this was going on and I went to the hearing for gambling and lost of course. They gave me three days in solitary and start all over from the lowest wing.  Well I went to the hole very angry and that is the last thing I remember because next thing I was on another wing and was mentally ill.  Although I did not know it at the time that I was mentally ill. Also did not know where I was at first or anything.  The next thing I knew I was cutting myself with a razor. I told the guard on duty what I had done cutting myself.  He next put me in a cell where they watch you and the next morning I was taken to the infirmary at Canon city.
A psychiatrist talked to me and at first thought I was mentally ill although he later changed his mind and just thought I was sleep deprived. He put me on Halcion sleeping medication although I did not start this medication until one night before Christmas. The psychiatrist came on seen me when I was better and asked where I would like to go for the rest of my time. I had been watching the inmates there and said right there behind the walls even though I could have gone back my friends all stuck by me there.  Although I had changed I was not the same person and will never be.  I changed with the mental illness.  I went back to the infirmary once more and that is when they started watching that I took my sleeping medicine.
My counselor at the time told me she was not going to recommend parole when I came up for it because she said I was a danger to myself and others.  I did not know what she meant at the time.  I knew they could not hold me once my appeal came through so I was not worried.  I wish now that at the time she would have explained it to me.  She was from Pueblo so she knew about mental illness.  I finally received a job there in the library and won my appeal six months later.  I did not know that I had a mental illness.  I will talk about the streets and how I became mentally ill the second time next week.  I sort of had a mental illness in the county waiting for my appeal bond although I had friends that took care of me there.

Crime Rarely Associated with Mental Illness

That is the title of this article I am writing about. I was going to write about how people with mental illness die younger then I found this article and I think it is a better article I will write the other next week.  I can attest to the article since I had my mental illness and was released from the state hospital I have no contact with the law.  This is from a person who they always stopped and even my friends would get stopped thinking they were me.  You hear about the crimes that are committed usually shooting’s that make the news.  They do not happen all the time.

What the article is saying is that they are arrested and it has nothing to do with the mental illness symptoms. Last week’s blog talked about the people that were incarcerated.  Here is some news about solitary confinement there is a bill in the house .It is bad for people with mental illness to be locked up with people who committee crimes.  The last time I was locked up was in the state hospital.  I believe that I had to prove myself that I wanted to be free.  I was on something called conditional release.  You see my sentence to the state hospital was one day to life.  To be free I had to do five years conditional release and that included UAs every month for five years.
If it had been prior to my mental illness I could not have done five years conditional release.  I could not even do one year parole without be locked up for parole violation.  Although being in the state hospital I had a chance to change my life around and I did it.  That meant giving up alcohol and drugs because with them you have no chance of turning things around.  If you take all the people locked up with and without a mental illness most are in because of alcohol and drugs when they committed their crimes. If you ask am I satisfied with my life today I would say yes.
I would not have known my grandkids except through pictures and stuff because I would have always been locked up that was the way my life went back then.  To not watch them grow up would have been hard. As I said last week people and mental illness do not need to be locked up in prison or jail they need the state hospital.  It feels good knowing that I can walk the streets now and not worry about being stopped or walking on the wrong lawn and getting arrested. It feels good getting to see my grandkids and know they can come over to visit.

In most cases the strategy to subdue someone who is mentally ill, suffering from their symptoms, is to role play or lecture the consumer. There are instances where reality becomes twisted. Police officers are trained to make decisions every day which either guide people to understanding through the use of performed attitudes, free of prejudice or stereotypical approaches. Two police officers forgot this line of training and brought about the death of a man who was mentally ill. Why did a man, sitting in a public place, mentally ill and homeless, meet with fate at the hands of trained law officers? There is no real answer, though they dispense the law they have now come before the scales of justice, because they did not perform their duty with beneficence or in a just manner. The problem lies there in also with the incompetence of the mentally ill, not being able to understand those whom are trying to communicate with them or the authorities of the office they are in care thereof. This theme is the same throughout the United States; it’s the complex nature of law enforcements responses to people with mental illnesses which has become the issue of concern, and politicians, people in the community and the general public whom are demanding some constraint to the growing problem of the mentally ill. As to the reasons the mentally ill are being singled out as a growing problem, this seems to be that the mentally ill when detained by the law are generally seen at some point as being incompetent and are not able to understand, being without a mediator of the mental health system they may even proceed to trial as defendants as such while they are at times unable to access the help they need from the mental health system or to be processed through the mental health system. There was no place for this homeless man as there seems to be no place for many whom have met with incarceration for weeks or even months; finding brutality or worse, then finding they are nowhere, alone and vulnerable or suffering from their symptoms without any kind of understanding except to be encroached by the law or even worse then again the criminal elements thereof. This is the danger the mentally ill and homeless face, once you are suspected of a crime, you become the target, unless someone is your guardian angel or there happens to be a Good Samaritan understanding the needs of a person of weakness. Written by Donald S.