Solitary Confinement is Even Worse Than You Realize
Isolation leads frequently to deepening mental illness, including depression, anxiety, hallucinations, and suicide.
Anthony Gay is severely mentally ill. And like many Americans who suffer from severe mental illness and who commit a crime, he was placed in solitary confinement after his conviction, rather than in a mental hospital where he could have received treatment for his schizophrenia. Isolated in a six-by-ten foot cell 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he spiraled into paranoia and began engaging in shocking self-mutilation. Gay stabbed himself in the eye with a razor blade. He cut off pieces of his own flesh and ate them. He cut out one of his own testicles and left it hanging on a cell door. He then stitched his scrotum closed with a zipper. Instead of being transferred to a hospital, or even the prison’s mental health unit, Gay had time added onto his sentence, all of it in solitary. His seven-year sentence eventually became 97 years. What was his crime? He was convicted in 1993 of stealing a $1 bill. Gay was scheduled for release in 2093 until a judge finally recognized that the system had failed him. He was eventually released from prison and sent to a hospital, but not until he had already spent 22 years in solitary.
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