Fit for Trial: Mental Illness, the Law and Family Loss

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Is the defendant fit for trial? This question is answered in many courtrooms by mental health professionals, prosecuting attorneys and judges who believe that a person who is delusional and incoherent, but presents no apparent violent threat, is fit for trial. Those with little to no financial and legal resources watch helplessly as their loved one is shuttled within the penal system.

This book discusses the problem from the perspective of one mother who watched her son become part of the thousands of incarcerated who are not criminals but are mentally ill. This family joined many others in experiencing the anguish of helplessness and hopelessness against a system that seems too large to fix and too fixed to care.

There are no easy answers, but many of the symptoms of mental illness are dismissed, ignored and vilified by society. The results are the incarceration of many whose crimes are due to a misunderstanding of mental illness symptoms. Add to the misunderstanding poverty and being a person of color, most notably African American and male, and it spells the unfolding of a national tragedy.