Fighting Depression in Prison - Prison Writers
Mentally ill inmates remain in jail longer than other inmates
Serious mental illness has become so prevalent in the US corrections system that jails and prisons are now commonly called “the new asylums.” In point of fact, the Los Angeles County Jail, Chicago’s Cook County Jail, or New York’s Riker’s Island Jail each hold more mentally ill inmates than any remaining psychiatric hospital in the United States. Overall, approximately 20% of inmates in jails and 15% of inmates in state prisons are now estimated to have a serious mental illness. Based on the total inmate population, this means approximately 383,000 individuals with severe psychiatric disease were behind bars in the United States in 2014 or nearly 10 times the number of patients remaining in the nation’s state hospitals.
Charles Davis, a contributor to Prison Writers, wrote an essay about fighting depression in prison.
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When we return to the cell, my cellmate grabs my soap dish and my towel, hands them to me, and says, “Get to it. No more of this moping around. You’re starting to make me depressed.”
I stare at him blankly, holding the hygiene items out in front of me like a soiled diaper. Then finally, with a look of exasperation on his face, he pushes me out of our cell door and into the dayroom towards the showers. In the shower, I struggle to find the motivation to wash myself. And I don’t even open my soap dish. I just stand under the faucet, letting the hot water splash my body as my stomach knots and loosens and knots again.
As I stand there, my mind keeps going back to how much I wish I was at home spending the holidays with my family, and how because of my addiction and selfishness I am incarcerated and unable to do that. I tell myself that maybe I should put in a medical request to see the psych doctor. In prison all mental health services are free, including meds. And I know that if I go to see the doctor he will definitely prescribe me medication once I tell him how I’ve been feeling. More than likely, I’ll have a whole regiment of pills at my disposal: one for my anxiety, one for my depression, one for my insomnia, one to combat mood swings, and one to increase my appetite – and all of them will have names with too many syllables to count and be guaranteed to sedate and numb and blur all my emotions until the only thing I feel is what I affectionately refer to as, “blah.”
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In July 2023, Charles Davis was released from prison. You can read his full essay, "Fighting Depression in Prison," at the Prison Writers website. Prison Writers offers uncensored, personal stories and thoughtful essays from incarcerated citizens across the country about what really goes on inside the secretive world of prison corrections, and have published almost 600 stories from hundreds of incarcerated writers across the country since 2015.
