Advocacy Letter

[Armee]

Now that I'm recovering some energy I'm feeling ready to start doing a tiny bit of volunteering or advocacy and took one small step today in personalizing a letter to my US representatives to support a bill to provide mental health and substance abuse care to prisoners upon leaving jail. I wrote about my father to personalize the suggested form letter. This may be the first time I am using my voice and experience in this way.

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Dear Senator _____,

As your constituent and a mental health advocate, I'm writing to ask you to support the Reentry Act (H.R. 2400 / S. 1165) to help people with mental illness and substance use disorders receive needed care upon their reentry into the community after incarceration.

My father was booked into jail the day I was born, for breaking into a convenience store and stealing a bottle of red wine. I never met him before he died of suicide at the age of 53. He had run away from home at the age of 14 and did not finish high school. I do not know the circumstances that led him to run away from home, but I do know children generally don't run away from home unless the alternative is worse than living alone on the streets, unfed and uncared for. Before landing in jail he was an alcoholic and drug addict. I do not know what mental illnesses he suffered from, but I know they were severe, and like so many of the prison population, likely due to experiencing severe childhood trauma.

According to the Compassion Prison Project, 78% of prisoners have experienced 4 or more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), such as caregiver addiction and mental illness, sexual abuse, and physical abuse. Just under 16% of the general population has experienced 4 or more ACEs out of a total of 10 (I have an "ACE score" of 10). Having multiple ACEs sets people up for a lifetime of expensive and deadly health and mental health issues. For example, someone who has 4 or more ACEs is 15x more likely to attempt suicide, 7x more likely to go to prison, and 1,350% more likely to face opiate abuse.

I don't know all of what happened to my father between being released from prison and his suicide. I do wonder though: if a program such as the Reentry Act had existed in 1978 and he had been provided the mental health care he desperately needed, would he have been able to heal enough to be part of his children's lives? Instead he ended up variably homeless and in subsidized housing, in and out of jail, on food stamps, and with a litany of health issues from kidney failure to cancer to COPD and heart disease (treatment provided by the government). In the end, he had nothing and nobody. I learned from his autopsy report that I obtained several years after his death that the government even paid to have his body disposed of using indigent cremation funds. That detail honestly broke my heart. Perhaps mental health treatment would have been cheaper.

Research shows that when people are enrolled in health care upon release, they are more likely to engage in community-based services and less likely to be re-arrested, and this is especially true for people with mental health conditions. Providing Medicaid coverage 30 days prior to release for eligible individuals through the Reentry Act will help connect people with the mental health care they need. In addition, perhaps it will also provide the opportunity for a child to have a parent. The impacts don't end with that one prisoner. It also affects their families and children and grandchildren. Supporting the Reentry Act can help not just that one prisoner, but generations.

[Moondance]

Brilliant Armee!!

[Bach]

That's a great letter, Armee. I am touched by your devotion to the cause.

[rainydiary]

I appreciate you sharing this.  I often think about incarcerated people and what many of them have experienced.  It feels like there has to be a better way to get people support they need. 

[Kizzie]

Armee, I am so sorry about your father, it's heartbreaking and I hope this brings you some measure of comfort and/or control for you.   

Have you seen the video "Step Inside the Circle"?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVxjuTkWQiE? It speaks to the connection between crime and trauma/mental health much like Gabor Mate makes the connection between addiction and trauma.

[Armee]

Thanks Bach, Moondance, and Rainy for the support.

Kizize, thank you for the link. I may have seen a brief snippet or read about it but hadn't watched the full clip. Thank you for sharing it.

It's all complicated isn't it?

What I didn't write was what a horrible person he was too. I know that's not his fault. You don't start out life that way. I tried to keep the letter focused on compassion but there's so much more there. And having been harmed by people who should probably have been in prison and probably never will be...it's complicated. But it doesn't change that we should be doing more as a society to stop and treat childhood  trauma in childhood, before more damage is done.

[Blueberry]

Armee, I am so sorry about your father, it's heartbreaking and I hope this brings you some measure of comfort and/or control for you.   

for that advocacy, Armee!