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ENLARGE
Registered nurse Wendy Wing passes out medications three times daily at the Douglas County Jail as she is doing for this inmate, who holds out his hand in anticipation in the administrative segregation area of the Douglas County Jail. This year, the jail lodged some 85 people who were given psychotropic medications at a cost that reached about $55,000.
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ENLARGE
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In 1995, Joshua Matthews had to be rescued from Elk Island by Roseburg police officers after he fell into the South Umpqua River while being pursued by police. He and a police officer trying to save him were swept downriver to the island, where they were rescued by the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office rescue boat. Matthews was taken to Mercy Medical Center for evaluation.
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Joshua Matthews was a good kid. He played sports, got good grades, had friends. He even excelled at chess, his family members say.
But at 15, something went terribly wrong in his mind.
“It’s just like a switch,” said Rick Matthews, the father of the now-31-year-old man with the childlike speech and unsettling stare, “like you’re turning the light on, you know, or off.”
Since his son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 18, Rick Matthews, of the Reston area, has watched him go through more than a decade of breakdowns and lockups.
Now, the man is scared of aliens and won’t walk under power lines. He’ll pick up cigarette butts off the street for a nicotine fix, and he’ll steal, trespass or assault people.
In and out of jail, on and off the streets, on and off his medications — Matthews found himself in a cycle not uncommon to people who suffer from mental illnesses and don’t abide by the law.
Few disagree that people like Matthews, and even those who don’t rise to his level, are casualties of a broken mental health care system. And when the cracks can’t be filled fast enough, another system must step in, one that sometimes offers legal advice instead of therapy, a mat on concrete floor to sleep on instead of a hospital bed.
“It is my observation,” said Butch Aller, a local defense attorney, “that more and more often, the jail and the prisons are faced with the responsibility of dealing with people who are terribly mentally ill.”
<b>ON THE STREETS</b>
When someone has lost control or is nearing the edge, police are often the first to be called. They are often left to decide whether to take someone into protective custody and to the hospital, or to jail.
Deciding which can sometimes put them in an uncomfortable role.
“We certainly are not trained in psychology or psychiatry,” said Sgt. Aaron Dunbar with the Roseburg Police Department.
The usual route to the hospital instead of the jail is taken when someone poses a danger to themselves, or sometimes to others.
In the past two years, Roseburg police placed nearly 190 peace officer holds on people found to be a danger to themselves or to others. Last year, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office placed nearly 200 holds, and this year surpassed 180.
Those people, many of them repeats, were taken to Mercy Medical Center’s emergency room for assessment. Before the Behavioral Health Unit closed in October, those who needed more intensive treatment would likely have stayed for a few days.
Police fear that will occur less and less and that fewer people will get the help they need.
Even when the BHU was open, officers say sometimes people they would bring in would be treated and released, only to turn around hours later or days later and have another break, again requiring police assistance.
That was when there were more than a dozen beds available. Now, there are three.
“They’re going to treat and release as many people as they can now,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Sanders, head of patrol.
Sheriff’s Office officials, who cover the county from the coast to Diamond Lake, and Drain to Glendale, fear deputies could spend hours on a single case from the initial contact with a mentally ill person, to the transport to Mercy, and then the wait-around time before possibly having to return the person home again.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Sanders said, “And it’s really going to take some police officers off the streets for long periods of time.”
But at 15, something went terribly wrong in his mind.
“It’s just like a switch,” said Rick Matthews, the father of the now-31-year-old man with the childlike speech and unsettling stare, “like you’re turning the light on, you know, or off.”
Since his son was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at 18, Rick Matthews, of the Reston area, has watched him go through more than a decade of breakdowns and lockups.
Now, the man is scared of aliens and won’t walk under power lines. He’ll pick up cigarette butts off the street for a nicotine fix, and he’ll steal, trespass or assault people.
In and out of jail, on and off the streets, on and off his medications — Matthews found himself in a cycle not uncommon to people who suffer from mental illnesses and don’t abide by the law.
Few disagree that people like Matthews, and even those who don’t rise to his level, are casualties of a broken mental health care system. And when the cracks can’t be filled fast enough, another system must step in, one that sometimes offers legal advice instead of therapy, a mat on concrete floor to sleep on instead of a hospital bed.
“It is my observation,” said Butch Aller, a local defense attorney, “that more and more often, the jail and the prisons are faced with the responsibility of dealing with people who are terribly mentally ill.”
<b>ON THE STREETS</b>
When someone has lost control or is nearing the edge, police are often the first to be called. They are often left to decide whether to take someone into protective custody and to the hospital, or to jail.
Deciding which can sometimes put them in an uncomfortable role.
“We certainly are not trained in psychology or psychiatry,” said Sgt. Aaron Dunbar with the Roseburg Police Department.
The usual route to the hospital instead of the jail is taken when someone poses a danger to themselves, or sometimes to others.
In the past two years, Roseburg police placed nearly 190 peace officer holds on people found to be a danger to themselves or to others. Last year, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office placed nearly 200 holds, and this year surpassed 180.
Those people, many of them repeats, were taken to Mercy Medical Center’s emergency room for assessment. Before the Behavioral Health Unit closed in October, those who needed more intensive treatment would likely have stayed for a few days.
Police fear that will occur less and less and that fewer people will get the help they need.
Even when the BHU was open, officers say sometimes people they would bring in would be treated and released, only to turn around hours later or days later and have another break, again requiring police assistance.
That was when there were more than a dozen beds available. Now, there are three.
“They’re going to treat and release as many people as they can now,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Brian Sanders, head of patrol.
Sheriff’s Office officials, who cover the county from the coast to Diamond Lake, and Drain to Glendale, fear deputies could spend hours on a single case from the initial contact with a mentally ill person, to the transport to Mercy, and then the wait-around time before possibly having to return the person home again.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Sanders said, “And it’s really going to take some police officers off the streets for long periods of time.”
<b>INTO THE SYSTEM</b>
Once people are jailed, they have even less access to treatment.
In his 25 years of working in juvenile and criminal law, Aller found himself drawn to representing the mentally ill, from those suffering from depression to the worst psychological ailments. Such clients make up much of his caseload.
As the ability to diagnose such illnesses has improved over the years, he’s found continual criminal activity and mental health issues tend to intermix.
“It’s become apparent that a very large percentage of these people are suffering some mental illness,” he said. “And our system does try valiantly to address it, but we just don’t have the resources.”
Such people, he said, already end up in jail and the court system too often. With BHU closed, he said, even more people who might be better served by treatment or medications will get a dose of the law instead.
That means more strain on a jail and prison system never intended to be the catchall for the mentally ill.
This year, the Douglas County Jail lodged some 85 people who were given county-funded psychotropic medications at a cost that reached about $55,000.
Sometimes family members or their doctors might inform jail staff of an inmate’s medication needs, but medical staff also track down medical information from local or even out-of-state care providers to ensure people can continue their treatment.
“They go out of their way to find out this person’s past medical history and see what they can do to help him or her,” said jail Lt. Mike Root.
Matthews, jailed in June on a trespassing charge, was one of those inmates, though his family members say he would typically refuse to take his medications. Unable to co-exist with other inmates, Matthews would remain in an isolation cell when in jail.
“That’s going to mess anybody’s brain up,” the man’s father said.
Though Rick Matthews gets frustrated by the way his son is treated in jail, he also understands that such inmates are a burden the jail system shouldn’t have to manage.
With the limited resources that are available, jail and mental health officials try to provide mentally ill inmates with the help they need, whether that means getting them mental health evaluations or having them transferred to medical facilities.
For the first time in years, Douglas County Mental Health is being reimbursed by the state for the cost of a staff member to monitor such inmates, said Mental Health Director Janet Holland. The case worker is also providing the parole and probation office with services that for the first time allow the department to add a mental health monitoring program.
But that funding from the state, which pays only for part-time service, ends next year.
“We could have a full-time person over there without any problem,” Holland said.
<b>WAYS TO IMPROVE</b>
In the meantime, officials are trying to be as creative as possible in stretching resources and coming up with new ideas.
That includes a plan for extra training for patrol officers.
Right now, most of the training police receive to handle encounters with the mentally ill in crisis comes from what they learn from their field training and on the job.
Mental health officials want to help them learn to better assess a situation and perhaps find alternatives to jail or the hospital.
For example, Holland said, officers might try to find out whether someone is making suicidal threats in the heat of the moment and can be calmed down on the scene. It can be as simple as asking the right questions.
“It’s giving the police officer more tools in their toolbox,” Holland said.
Dunbar said when possible, officers already might try to calm someone down and refer them to counseling or a family member.
“We end up problem-solving,” he said.
The Douglas County Juvenile Department has also taken steps to better aid those with mental illnesses. New screening tools put in place last year have shown that around 60 percent of juveniles who come into the detention center may be emotionally disturbed or suffering some sort of mental illness, or at least need to be evaluated further.
By shuffling funds around, the department will soon start paying for a mental health worker to do further assessments. The hope is to stave off juvenile offenses by addressing the needs of youth.
“When you aren’t able to address them,” said Christina McMahan, director of the Juvenile Department, “kids get into more trouble.”
The concept for a mental health court, similar to Douglas County’s Drug Court or Domestic Violence Court, has been worked up as well.
Judge Randy Garrison and other officials saw the need for mental health services in the court system and came up with a plan to provide intensive monitoring as a part of the sentencing process for some offenders.
“If we can pull together with a variety of resources,” Garrison said, “then the public is going to be safer and people are going to be more successful in dealing with their mental health issues.”
Not surprisingly, the concept hinges on funding.
<b>TOO LATE?</b>
For Joshua Matthews, the resources available out there weren’t enough. Perhaps, nothing would have been enough.
For years, Rick Matthews feared his son would end up in prison, easy prey to hardened criminals. Although he doesn’t agree with the way so-called insane asylums were run years ago, he wishes there was a medical facility to which severely mentally ill people like his son could be committed indefinitely.
“There needs to be funding for places for people that are mentally ill to be 24 hours a day,” he said.
Recently Matthews came closer to prison than ever before, when he told a judge he’d changed his mind about pleading guilty but for insanity to a charge that he spit on a corrections deputy while in jail.
A visit with a psychologist and his defense attorney led him to realize the better alternative would be the state hospital. He’s been there before, but this time he will be under the jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security Review Board for five years. Once he’s stabilized, he’ll go to a group home to help reintroduce him to the community.
Rick Matthews is grateful Joshua avoided prison, but he finds irony in the fact that his son, and people like him, are granted the ability to decide their fates.
“They’re not capable of making up their own decisions.”
• You can reach reporter Chelsea Duncan at 957-4246 or by e-mail at cduncan@newsreview.info.
Once people are jailed, they have even less access to treatment.
In his 25 years of working in juvenile and criminal law, Aller found himself drawn to representing the mentally ill, from those suffering from depression to the worst psychological ailments. Such clients make up much of his caseload.
As the ability to diagnose such illnesses has improved over the years, he’s found continual criminal activity and mental health issues tend to intermix.
“It’s become apparent that a very large percentage of these people are suffering some mental illness,” he said. “And our system does try valiantly to address it, but we just don’t have the resources.”
Such people, he said, already end up in jail and the court system too often. With BHU closed, he said, even more people who might be better served by treatment or medications will get a dose of the law instead.
That means more strain on a jail and prison system never intended to be the catchall for the mentally ill.
This year, the Douglas County Jail lodged some 85 people who were given county-funded psychotropic medications at a cost that reached about $55,000.
Sometimes family members or their doctors might inform jail staff of an inmate’s medication needs, but medical staff also track down medical information from local or even out-of-state care providers to ensure people can continue their treatment.
“They go out of their way to find out this person’s past medical history and see what they can do to help him or her,” said jail Lt. Mike Root.
Matthews, jailed in June on a trespassing charge, was one of those inmates, though his family members say he would typically refuse to take his medications. Unable to co-exist with other inmates, Matthews would remain in an isolation cell when in jail.
“That’s going to mess anybody’s brain up,” the man’s father said.
Though Rick Matthews gets frustrated by the way his son is treated in jail, he also understands that such inmates are a burden the jail system shouldn’t have to manage.
With the limited resources that are available, jail and mental health officials try to provide mentally ill inmates with the help they need, whether that means getting them mental health evaluations or having them transferred to medical facilities.
For the first time in years, Douglas County Mental Health is being reimbursed by the state for the cost of a staff member to monitor such inmates, said Mental Health Director Janet Holland. The case worker is also providing the parole and probation office with services that for the first time allow the department to add a mental health monitoring program.
But that funding from the state, which pays only for part-time service, ends next year.
“We could have a full-time person over there without any problem,” Holland said.
<b>WAYS TO IMPROVE</b>
In the meantime, officials are trying to be as creative as possible in stretching resources and coming up with new ideas.
That includes a plan for extra training for patrol officers.
Right now, most of the training police receive to handle encounters with the mentally ill in crisis comes from what they learn from their field training and on the job.
Mental health officials want to help them learn to better assess a situation and perhaps find alternatives to jail or the hospital.
For example, Holland said, officers might try to find out whether someone is making suicidal threats in the heat of the moment and can be calmed down on the scene. It can be as simple as asking the right questions.
“It’s giving the police officer more tools in their toolbox,” Holland said.
Dunbar said when possible, officers already might try to calm someone down and refer them to counseling or a family member.
“We end up problem-solving,” he said.
The Douglas County Juvenile Department has also taken steps to better aid those with mental illnesses. New screening tools put in place last year have shown that around 60 percent of juveniles who come into the detention center may be emotionally disturbed or suffering some sort of mental illness, or at least need to be evaluated further.
By shuffling funds around, the department will soon start paying for a mental health worker to do further assessments. The hope is to stave off juvenile offenses by addressing the needs of youth.
“When you aren’t able to address them,” said Christina McMahan, director of the Juvenile Department, “kids get into more trouble.”
The concept for a mental health court, similar to Douglas County’s Drug Court or Domestic Violence Court, has been worked up as well.
Judge Randy Garrison and other officials saw the need for mental health services in the court system and came up with a plan to provide intensive monitoring as a part of the sentencing process for some offenders.
“If we can pull together with a variety of resources,” Garrison said, “then the public is going to be safer and people are going to be more successful in dealing with their mental health issues.”
Not surprisingly, the concept hinges on funding.
<b>TOO LATE?</b>
For Joshua Matthews, the resources available out there weren’t enough. Perhaps, nothing would have been enough.
For years, Rick Matthews feared his son would end up in prison, easy prey to hardened criminals. Although he doesn’t agree with the way so-called insane asylums were run years ago, he wishes there was a medical facility to which severely mentally ill people like his son could be committed indefinitely.
“There needs to be funding for places for people that are mentally ill to be 24 hours a day,” he said.
Recently Matthews came closer to prison than ever before, when he told a judge he’d changed his mind about pleading guilty but for insanity to a charge that he spit on a corrections deputy while in jail.
A visit with a psychologist and his defense attorney led him to realize the better alternative would be the state hospital. He’s been there before, but this time he will be under the jurisdiction of the Psychiatric Security Review Board for five years. Once he’s stabilized, he’ll go to a group home to help reintroduce him to the community.
Rick Matthews is grateful Joshua avoided prison, but he finds irony in the fact that his son, and people like him, are granted the ability to decide their fates.
“They’re not capable of making up their own decisions.”
• You can reach reporter Chelsea Duncan at 957-4246 or by e-mail at cduncan@newsreview.info.
