Health care in America is not up to standards for the year 2015. In many cases we are looking at the elderly and mentally ill as people who are incoherent and the institutions meant to care for them and interact with the on a regular basis similar to jails.
Karen Hellmuth, a 72-year old woman of Brainbridge Island, Wash., knows this too well.
Hellmuth recently spent nearly 100 days in a Kitsap County Jail’s isolation cell without receiving treatment for what friends say is a decline in her mental health.
Hellmuth was arrested Oct. 4 following a blow-up with a Bainbridge Island neighbor and a violent confrontation with the arresting officer. A judge ruled Hellmuth was not competent to face charges and ordered her to Western State Hospital for treatment, but a lack of bed space forced her to remain in jail on a wait list through the holidays.
It wasn’t until Friday, that Hellmuth was transferred to the hospital.
A federal judge ruled Dec. 22 in a civil case challenging the wait lists that holding mentally ill people in jails without treatment violates their constitutional rights, but Washington has yet to implement changes. Hundreds of people like Hellmuth remain jailed awaiting competency evaluations, some up to 13 weeks.
This is, sadly, not a surprise. This happens in every corner of our country because we do not have health care as one of our top priorities for the public.
It seems overwhelmingly that our prerogative is to invest in jails and law enforcement, which would explain why we have more people incarcerated per capita in the world.
We do not invest enough in education, either. Dr. Andrew Sum and his colleagues at Northeastern University found that young people who drop out of high school are 63 percent more likely to be incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized than their peers with four-year college degrees.
So what happens to the people that do not have a formal high school education because of the many different levels of mental capacity or special conditions? Where do they go when we do not have the right havens and medical care they can access?
They may end up in an institution, privatized and in jail—like conditions. They are cut off from certain freedoms because they are generalized within the facility.
Some stay at home, like Hellmuth did, and are arrested at the site of anything unusual, and forced to be subjected to a jail due to a lack of beds and investment in healthcare, instead of being released home or to a haven where she could receive care specific to her needs.
Western Massachusetts Hospital located on East Mountain road here in Westfield is the only hospital located in western Massachusetts that is a public facility. Its mission is aimed toward creating low-cost treatment for the public.
It would be wonderful to see more places like this.
Erika Hayden is a WSU student, citizen journalist and grassroots writer.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not the staff, editor, or publisher of this publication.
