The New Asylums
Doris Fuller (left) with her daughter, Natalie.
The Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues will present “The New Asylums: Mentally Ill and Behind Bars,” a lecture by Doris Fuller on the rise of mentally ill patients within the prison system, Thursday, Nov. 5, at 7 p.m. in the Stern Center Great Room. The lecture also will be available online via live stream.
According to The Huffington Post, there are more mentally ill individuals in prisons than in state mental institutions and approximately one in five inmates is considered mentally ill. Through personal stories and professional insight, Fuller, an author and researcher will discuss the implications of prisons becoming the treatment centers for mentally ill patients.
Fuller is chief of research and public affairs at the Treatment Advocacy Center, an organization that promotes laws, policies and practices for the delivery of psychiatric care and supports the development of innovative treatments for, and research into, the causes of severe and persistent psychiatric illnesses. She has co-authored several research studies about the relationship between mental illness and prisons.
A frequent guest on national TV and radio, often quoted in print and the author of many timely op-eds, Fuller is an author of books, a former award-winning journalist and the mother of a daughter who experienced her first psychotic break as a college student. Fuller described her daughter’s struggles with severe mental illness and March 2015 suicide in a feature for The Washington Post, “How the ‘Demons’ Took My Daughter,” which has been read by millions of people worldwide.
The program is sponsored by the Clarke Forum and co-sponsored by the Division of Student Life, the health studies certificate program and the Department of Psychology. It is part of the Clarke Forum’s fall-semester theme, Inequality and Mass Incarceration in the United States. For more information, call 717-245-1875.
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Published October 20, 2015