In this intense, revealing episode, we’ll hear Floyd make an outcry of suicidal ideation while speaking with officers from the Behavioral Intervention Unit of the Hurst, Euless, and Bedford Police Departments in Texas, between Dallas and Fort Worth- which just might be America’s most progressive, proactive mental health unit.
There are ten times more people (http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/treatment-behind-bars/treatment-behind-bars.pdf) with serious mental illnesses in America’s prisons and jails than in state mental hospitals. Some of our nation’s largest psychiatric in-patient clinics are in county jails in Chicago (http://www.cookcountysheriff.org/MentalHealthTemplate.html), Los Angeles (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93581736), and New York (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/nyregion/for-mentally-ill-inmates-at-rikers-a-cycle-of-jail-and-hospitals.html).
We’ve heard that about one in four people arrested in America suffer from both severe mental illness and drug or alcohol abuse. But that number only scratches the surface of the problem: the bigger problem might well be the people with mental illness who aren’t arrested.