It’s true that most people dealing with bipolar or schizophrenia are not dangerous, and it’s also true that someone in the middle of a psychotic episode is not going to seem very “normal” to us. Unfortunately, what that often means is that people will call the police, because who else is there to call? Then, the police, who are trained to deal with dangerous criminals, act accordingly, because, again, they have no other training. The best option for them is to get the person off the streets and way from the public, which means jail, because, once more, there’s probably not anywhere else to take them.

Now they are part of the criminal justice system. A place with almost no mental health treatment available.

Of course, as the article below also reminds us, that’s only if they actually survive all of these encounters, which is, far too often, not the case.