Mental Health and Policing
Policing Mental Health:
A Historical and Geographical Analysis of Mental Health Policy in Atlanta Georgia
Recently, the Georgia state House of Representatives passed House Bill 1013, also called The Mental Health Parity Act. The bill sought to address access to and insurance coverage for mental health services, issues that were identified in a Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability report in 2020. The budget for mental health services was reduced by $8 m in 2020, when demand was at an all-time high. In contrast, law enforcement budgets have grown every year, despite changing public perceptions of mental health and police violence, including antipathy towards the $80m ear marked for "Cop City." Meanwhile, half of Georgia’s counties have no psychiatrist, and the projected mental health workforce will be able to meet 12% of consumer demand by 2025.
The Policing Mental Health Project examines how the history of Georgia’s provision of psychiatric services after deinstitutionalization has led to current problems, echoing a history that prioritizes punishment and surveillance using ideas about deviancy and crime based in white supremacy. This project features a methodology for evaluating mental health policy and a theoretical framework based on the work of psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl, sociologists Tressie McMillan Cottom and Karen E. Fields, and historians Barbara J. Fields and Achille Mbembe. Using archival materials, interviews with stakeholders, geographical information systems software, and data from the Georgia Department of Corrections, the project found that a disproportionate number of people who are arrested are incarcerated due to the criminalization of mental health disorders. Based on an analysis of redlining maps and arrest data, approximately 40% of “quality of life” arrests are in approximately 8% of Atlanta’s acreage, which are historically redlined areas with majority Black populations.
The Role of Psychiatric Nurses
While the State has decried the shrinking mental health workforce, the contributions of psychiatric nurses and nurse practitioners are continuously overlooked in community mental health. Psychiatric nurse practitioners are a recognized upstream solution to reduce the need for forensic services, but current policy fails to adequately support or recognize nurses as mental health first responders. Meanwhile, a significant proportion of mental health services are provided through jails and prisons, an extremely expensive and inefficient solution with poor outcomes and high likelihood of recidivism. These findings demonstrate that the failure to account for history has created a mental health policy that replicates problems of the past which disproportionately impact Atlanta’s people of color.
