Title: Mental Illness Soars In Prisons, Jails While Inmates Suffer | HuffPost
Headings: Mental Illness Soars In Prisons, Jails While Inmates Suffer
Mental Illness Soars In Prisons, Jails While Inmates Suffer
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Content: “He started saying he thought his attorney was the Antichrist,” Jones says. “ He thought Obama was an alien. He thought he was a time traveler.” Jones says she begged the jail to force him to take his medication, but staff told her he was allowed to refuse treatment. In June 2010, Lester stopped taking his medication completely. After he told a guard he was contemplating ending his life, he was placed on suicide watch. On July 9, he was deemed stable. On July 11, his roommate woke up to Lester’s blood dripping on him. He had stabbed himself vigorously in the neck, wrist and groin with a razor. “Treating the mentally ill is different than acting with a normal population,” says Joe Baumann, a corrections officer at the California Rehabilitation Center. “