Political Quotes

“I thank the Chairman, and I also thank Representative Grisham for this thoughtful amendment we are working on together, which will put $2 million towards crisis intervention training for State and local law enforcement and also work towards substance abuse treatment and mental health courts. In the 1950s, this country had 550,000 psychiatric hospital beds for the population of 150 million. Now, with a population twice that size, we only have 40,000 psychiatric hospital beds. So what happened? Some people got better. But sadly, what we ended up with is huge increases in homelessness and visits to emergency rooms. Last year in this country there were 40,000 suicides and 1 million suicide attempts. With this critical bed shortage we have many people who end up committing crimes. Of the 2.4 million incarcerated Americans, about half of them, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, are estimated to have a mental health condition. That is 64 percent in our county and local jails, 56 percent in State, and 45 percent of Federal prisoners. By comparison, there are only 35,000 patients with severe mental illness in State psychiatric hospitals. And, according to a report from April 2014, the number of mentally ill persons in prison is ten times higher than that in psychiatric hospitals. The largest jails in the country--Cook County in Illinois, Los Angeles, and New York--have 11,000 prisoners combined with serious mental illness.…”