Tag: arrest

Abnormal Psychology, Popular Psychology

Blinded By Beauty: Ignorance Towards The Mentally Ill

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC1 Comment on Blinded By Beauty: Ignorance Towards The Mentally Ill

Alexander_AyannaYesterday while watching the local news, I saw a story about an officer who was called to an apartment complex after residents called bout a naked woman outside of her apartment.

Upon arriving, officer Ryan McIntosh found 20-year-old Ayanna Alexander outside of her apartment, but she had put on clothing by then.

Ayanna, who is an exotic dancer, told the officer that she was upset because she didn’t have a ride to work at Rachels, a local strip club.

The officer didn’t think Ayanna was impaired or had any other medical conditions, so he called his supervisor and got permission to drive Ayanna to work. He dropped her off and left, only to be called back shortly afterwards to a nearby restaurant after receiving a call about a naked woman thrashing the restaurant and disturbing patrons.

The officers arrived at the restaurant to find Ayanns with no pants or underwear on and during questioning by the police, she removed her shirt and bra and said she wanted to go to jail.

Ayanna was charged with disturbing the peace, indecent exposure and trespassing.

The problem I have with this is, not many people in their right minds, especially an “attractive” 20-year-old woman would just strip naked and cause havoc. To me, this just screams mental illness from the start, rather it is bipolar disorder or something else, but from the start of this story i felt like this woman should have been taken to the hospital for a mental evaluation, not taken to work and just dropped off.

Even after the second incident, instead of taking her to jail, I still feel like she should have been taken for a mental evaluation. Something clearly isn’t right. Maybe it is drugs, who knows? The officer said she didn’t seem impaired, but her behavior was abnormal and he didn’t do a urinary drug screen to rule out she was on anything.

Also, he was obviously not a Crisis Intervention Team officer or had much training, experience or exposure to mental illnesses or he would have recognized that this woman was in need of help, not a ride to her place of employment.

I’m not necessarily blaming the officer for not being trained properly, but I am blaming him for being ignorant and perhaps even blinded by an attractive female and wanting to do the “nice” thing by giving her a ride to work instead of truly investigating the incident.

At the hospital I work at it’s not uncommon for officers to bring us young, attractive, 20 something year old women they find naked running or walking through the streets or just sitting in the middle of the road. Nine times out of ten these women are not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol, but are suffering some type of mental break.

Often times it’s their first psychotic episode and they go on to be diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder (most commonly), and other times they are people with long histories of mental illness.

The late teens and early twenties are the prime ages for the development of bipolar disorder and it’s not uncommon for people to present with symptoms of erratic, impulsive and irrational behavior for the first time around 20.

If this woman is simply arrested, charged and then released, she will get no help and eventually spiral out of control again, but maybe next time she won’t run into a naive officer who is trying to be nice, but maybe a predator or someone else who instead of helping this lady may victimize her or she may do something much more reckless and dangerous than taking off her clothing and throwing food in a restaurant.

Sometimes it’s hard to recognize and start treating the first symptoms of a mental illness, but to me it’s common sense that if you come across a naked, exotic dancer who gets paid to take her clothes off, doing it for free outside in the daytime, something isn’t right and the two most likely culprits are drugs and mental illness.

If the officer quickly decided she wasn’t impaired or had a medical conditions, why didn’t he take her to rule out a mental health condition other than ignorance? This is a problem on many occasions, but especially when you consider that the jails and prisons in our country today house many more mentally ill people than all of the mental hospitals, clinics and institutions combined.

Untrained officers come in contact with mentally ill people on nearly a daily basis and often times the result is tragic (numerous officer related shootings involving mentally ill people is what sparked crisis intervention team training for law enforcement officers), or they are arrested or simply ignored.

In this case, two out of three happened. Her mental condition was ignored and then she was arrested.

Popular Psychology

The School To Prison Pipeline

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC2 Comments on The School To Prison Pipeline

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The school-to-prison pipeline is a widespread pattern across the United States that pushes students, particularly disadvantaged students, out of schools and into the criminal justice system.

This is largely due to public institutions not properly addressing  the needs of individual students who may need extra help educationally and socially. This is often because of financial and staffing shortages.

This results in students being poorly educated, dropping out or getting kicked out of school, often resulting in arrests that develop into a cycle of continued arrests and crime which plaque not only that individual, but their community and ultimately, our society as a whole.

Hundreds Of Thousands Of Students Arrested At School Yearly

Each year across the nation, thousands of students are handcuffed in front of their classmates and taken to jail for behavioral problems that used to just result in a student being sent to the principal’s office or suspended.

A large majority of the students being arrested aren’t committing criminal acts, but displaying bad behavior. They are being arrested for misdemeanors such as “disorderly conduct”, which includes infractions such as refusing to give up their cellphone in schools with no cellphone policies and classroom disruptions. A relatively small percentage are arrests for weapons charges.

I personally have seen students arrested who had been suspended or put into an alternative school program, but came back to school either thinking their suspension was up or without truly understanding the terms and conditions of their suspension. Granted, when asked to leave campus these kids were defiant and thus arrested for trespassing, and while some were given warnings to leave campus, others weren’t given a warning at all and were simply arrested in front of their classmates.

There are definitely times and instances when students need to be arrested and detained for their own safety and/or the safety of others, but I think far too often, students are needlessly being arrested, taken down to the juvenile detention center and exposed to the criminal justice system.

An arrest record can stay with these students for the rest of their lives, even when the charges are dropped. When applying for jobs or to colleges and asked, “Have you ever been arrested”, they will will have to check “yes”.

Last week I watched as a group of girls had a verbal altercation on campus, that looked like it may erupt into something physical. As far as I could see, no one was physically being assaulted, but one of the school resource officers responding to the disruption, grabbed a girl, threw her to the ground and placed handcuffs on her. Despite everyone screaming that she wasn’t doing anything wrong, she was still detained. I believe she was eventually released to the custody of her parents and suspended, but  it was obvious by the look on her face and everyone around her, that it was a traumatizing experience.

Not only is being arrested traumatizing and embarrassing, it interrupts a students educational process and can create distrust in the school system and the law. I think far too often, arrests are made in cases such as a petty fight, minor vandalism, trespassing and minor theft, things that used to send a kid home for ten days, but now may get them arrested. I’ve even seen students tazed by officers during school fights, when they used to be broken up by teachers.

Granted, often students who get arrested have ignored warnings and instructions given by the police officer.

I wouldn’t dare want to interfere with law enforcement’s ability to do their job, especially in light of  the Sandy Hook shootings, but when police officers are on campus, the number of student arrests for minor infractions increases, many of which seem petty and unproductive.

For example, here in Florida a teen was arrested for trespassing because during her suspension she returned to school to take her final exams, and students involved in fights are often charged with battery against each other.

Disabled and Black Students Are Disproportionately Arrested

Students with various disabilities and black students are arrested more compared to their percentage of the student population. Even in schools for students with severe emotional problems, students are getting arrested for things like hitting, kicking and throwing objects, behavior that seems more related to their disabilities than to criminal acts.

While black students are more likely to be arrested than white students, it’s not because black students are misbehaving more, but historically and presently they seem to be punished more severely for less serious infractions, according to a study done by The Equity Project at Indiana University. Black males tend to be arrested more for “disorderly conduct” while white males are more likely to be arrested for drug charges. Black students are also more likely to have their cases dismissed than white students.

We can’t criminalize children for being and acting like children. Most of the students who get arrested already have had discipline or absenteeism problems before the arrest and could have benefited from an in school psychologically based program, such as the one I work for. It helps students with anger, academic, emotional, substance and behavior problems, and we even advocate for them during times when they are on the verge of getting arrested or expelled.

Unfortunately, many schools don’t have this type of program, nor the funds and staff to conduct the social services needed.

Popular Psychology

Energy Drinks: Are They A Serious Threat to Teens?

by Torey C. Richards, LMHC3 Comments on Energy Drinks: Are They A Serious Threat to Teens?

For years I’ve been hearing that energy drinks are bad for you, but that never stopped me from consuming them on a regular basis throughout college and especially after grad school when I worked overnight at a psychiatric hospital and felt like I needed to be extra alert at all times.

I personally have never had a bad experience with energy drinks, although once I did take an Extra Strength 5 Hour Energy shot before working out and during my workout felt like my heart was going to jump out of my chest. I never did that again.

Recently there has been a lot of attention given to teens drinking energy drinks, including Anais Fournier, who was 14 and drank two 24-ounce cans of an energy drink and then died six days later after going into cardiac arrest and a coma.

Her death was officially considered to be from cardiac arrhythmia due to caffeine toxicity.

Drinking those two 24 ounce cans, she had consumed 480 milligrams of caffeine, about five times the recommended limit by the American Academy of Pediatrics and about as much as drinking 14 cans of Coca Cola.

I never really gave a lot of thought to this topic until yesterday when one of my teenage clients came into my office with a huge 24-ounce can of Monster energy drink and suddenly I found myself being a bit concerned for her.

Could drinking energy drinks really have killed the young lady mentioned above and potentially others that are under investigation?  Do they pose a potential risk to the millions of teenagers who drink them on a daily basis?

Caffeine is the most commonly used psychoactive drug in the world. Most teens I know who consume energy drinks do it either to have enough energy needed to make it through the day, to stay up studying, to have increased energy while participating in a physically demanding activity, while partying, and to alter their mood.

Most teens are unaware of the amount of caffeine they are consuming, or don’t care because they think it’s harmless, when in fact it can be harmful if too much caffeine is consumed too quickly and is paired with a pre-existing medical condition.

Many teens are unaware that they have cardiac problems and are at risk for cardiac arrest, thus their caffeine intake should be limited.

Caffeine overdoses have increasingly been on the rise over the past few years with emergency rooms seeing over 12,000 cases last year.

Many researchers believe there is no reason for kids to ingest more caffeine then what is naturally found in the things they already consume, stating that caffeine mixing with the sugar often found in energy drinks can have bad effects on blood pressure and can lead to cardiac problems.

Most teens I know are more at risk when they are out with friends, partying or when they drink energy drinks just before playing a sport. 

Parents should monitor their children’s intake of caffeine and how quickly they consume drinks with caffeine in them.