From Prison Yards to Graveyards: The Fatal Consequences of Ignoring Mental Health in Reentry

Reentry in America is a joke—deplorable and laughable. The key component that could make Returning Citizens successful and lower the recidivism rate is never addressed: Post Prison Traumatic Stress Disorder (PPTSD).

PPTSD is compounded by the everyday stresses of life that everyone normally deals with: Where am I going to stay? How will I support myself? How will society receive me? How will I navigate a changed society in terms of technology, viewpoints, and values—especially with no guide?

I realized the mental health of Returning Citizens must be addressed when a good friend of mine, King Prime (RIP), killed himself on my daughter’s second birthday—a brother I had just spoken to five days earlier. A stand-up man who did 26 years in supermax and maximum-security prisons, he was gone from this planet less than two years after coming home.

I was shocked and surprised, and a tear slid out of my eye just before the "Happy Birthday" song. Until then, I hadn’t taken mental health seriously. I was dealing with my own stress factors and realized that maybe I should.

Leaving society as a young person with a gangster mentality and coming back as a hardened, emotionally challenged adult without life skills can be daunting for any Returning Citizen. I was recently reminded of this at the NYC Mental Health & Wellness Summit at John Jay College when Jeffrey Deskovic, who was wrongfully convicted at 16 and a panelist on Navigating Mental Health Challenges Post-Incarceration panel, stated, “I never lived alone or went grocery shopping.” Something so simple and routine for most adults can be a significant challenge for a Returning Citizen.

After King Prime’s suicide, I put myself under the microscope. I was facing personal and professional challenges, dealing with internal frustrations I had never experienced before. I was also a father to a two-year-old child in a falling-apart engagement, and I didn’t know where to begin to fix it. I had to be honest with myself: I needed social and emotional tools that I did not have.

I needed help. I had tried therapy before, but it wasn’t for me; it was a suggestion from my ex-fiancé. I went along with it to appease her. When my insurance no longer covered the sessions, I was fine with it—I wasn’t getting anything out of it and didn’t see the point. But now, I needed to do this for myself.

I explained my insurance situation to a former colleague who was a social worker. She recommended Open Path Collective, and my journey began. I preferred a melanin woman over a man—someone who came from a similar cultural background as me, someone I would feel comfortable exposing my inner self to without feeling judged or having to explain the nuances that exist from historical and sociocultural realities.

I realized the mental health component was never considered as I thought back on the 6-month reentry program I was forced to take when I made parole in VADOC. As a former Reentry Program Coordinator for two and a half years, I saw that the mental health of the juveniles we worked with was not even considered. So, I wasn’t surprised when I saw a familiar name in the news for having stabbed his girlfriend in the neck in front of her apartment, killing her.

Young boys are taught not to cry and to “suck it up,” as if being emotionally in tune will make them weak. Combined with WASP-created cultural values of what makes a man, it’s no wonder why men crash out at the rate they do or commit suicide. A quick Google search will show you that men have at least a four times higher suicide rate than women.

According to research, those who are recently released from prison have a suicide rate 10 times higher than average (Binswanger et al., 2007). Either these reentry programs are a joke, or they are working exactly as intended—just like the Prison Industrial Complex.