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"Why would our society allow for someone who's sick to be treated this way, to not be given the kind of care they deserve?"
by applewood

    Today the three biggest mental health centers in America are jails: LA County, Cook County, Ill. (Chicago) and New York City's Rikers Island jail. Without the support needed, conditions have created new asylums, advocates say, that can resemble the very places they vowed to shut down.

    "Local jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health institutions," says Elizabeth Hancq, director of research at the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national nonprofit that works to eliminate barriers to treatment for people with severe mental illness. "It's really a humanitarian crisis that if you suffer from a severe mental illness in this country, you almost need to commit a crime in order to get into the system."

    Almost one-third of people with a mental illness get into the treatment systems through an encounter with a police officer, studies show. The lack of available treatment beds nationally means more people with a mental illness are stuck in jails until one becomes available, often for painfully long periods.