By Leo Cardez
From PHN Issue 53, Summer 2023
I read an article in Men’s Health that really struck me. It wasn’t specifically written for the inmate community, but it should have been. In the piece, Dr. (psychiatrist) Gregory Scott Brown is discussing something called adjustment disorder (AD).
In layman terms, AD is a disproportionate reaction to something stressful in one’s life. AD may make one feel worried, hopeless, or a general sense of unease. Sound familiar? Post-COVID inmate issues are pretty similar across the U.S.: anger over job/program/assignment loss, despair about the difficulty in staying in touch with loved ones, sensitivity over race relations, and general malaise over extended lockdowns brought about by anything from quarantine protocols to staff shortages. In time, all these tiny attacks to your routine and well-being add up.
In prison, aggressions are a part of life. These mini-hostile attacks can come from anywhere—from the guards, nurses, counselors, teachers, and fellow inmates—based on everything from general dislike to race (mostly race). For the most part, you learn how to let them slide off your back, but combine these microaggressions with COVID-19 related stressors and now we can be looking at mental, emotional, and physical distress. Research shows that those who feel they are being treated differently because of their race often feel stressed (duh) and that can lead to problems in the future, both seen and unseen, like feeling isolated and angry.
In prison, we’re told to be tough and that if we are disrespected, the correct response is anger and, if necessary, violence. The rules of the facility, though, tell us that such a response can get us in serious trouble, even more time. So we push down our feelings and let the indignities build up inside of us. What’s worse is we are not getting or seeking help. A 2018 study estimated that 56% to 74% of Black men in America who have experienced trauma (like prison life) “may have an unmet need for mental health services” (Motley and Banks, 2018). I would argue that those percentages are much higher today and for the inmate community. (I mean, it’s just common sense.)
Take Mayor (not his real name, but something we call him because he has a politician’s charm and knows everyone in the camp), a respected ex-gang chief with long braids and the body of someone who has recently lost a lot of weight. He is well-liked on both sides of the fence. He knows all the right people and can make things happen. We’d worked together for five years in the prison law library, where we’d become something as close to friends as you can have in prison. He once helped me get a new celly when he saw I was having issues, but over the past couple of years something changed in him.
He became short with people—and a cell slug in the rare moments we were allowed some social connectivity. I tried to talk to him about it. “I can’t sleep through the night. I’m scared shitless over this bug because of my asthma. And something is off in my brain. I had to read a page in a book three times before I finally understood it. That’s not like me, and I’m nervous,” Mayor explained. He told me he felt like he was finally losing it and, worse, taking it out on innocent bystanders. He told me a story about how he blew up at his celly for finding a hair in the sink—turned out to be his own. Per Dr. Brown’s article, it seemed he had all the symptoms of AD, but he didn’t have the tools necessary to work through them.
According to the article, AD can come on strong and fast, but it doesn’t typically last that long, and we can usually pinpoint how it started, like divorce, death, and job loss. (Other mental health issues can keep you “keyed up for months” with no idea why.) It was clear COVID-19 related social side effects had messed with the Mayor’s ability to be at his best.
Now that we know that AD is possible, maybe even common, when our life is temporarily upended (like going to prison or being stuck in prison during a pandemic), we can start to recognize the effects in our lives. Listen, in prison or not, life will throw us some curveballs or even hit us with a couple of pitches (to complete the cliché); therefore, it would benefit all of us to know how to deal with them. Based on Dr. Brown’s suggestions in the article, I would recommend:
- Reconnect with the world, in any way possible. Call friends and family (video visit, in-person visit, letters, text messages, whatever), get a workout buddy or a chess nemesis—the point is to spend time with others in a space where you are focused on something other than your problems. Find something to get excited about, and then share it with others in your life.
- Re-engage in life by creating new goals and hopes to aspire to, then create a plan to achieve them—even in this strained and constrained new environment. Sure, everything you had planned may have been blown to bits by COVID-19. Focus on what you can do now. Get creative! We inmates are nothing if not inventive. (Mayor recently started to paint and take a correspondence paralegal course.) The goal is to do something that can help fight against the feelings of helplessness, loneliness, and stagnation.
- Get help. Talk to a counselor, nurse—someone. They may recommend yoga or meditation, or maybe you may even temporarily need medication (to help you sleep, for example). The point is, do something before you fall into a death spiral you can’t pull yourself out of.
The reality is we are constantly being asked to make hard life adjustments while serving any lengthy prison sentence and, whether we know it or not, we are in a constant state of flux, dealing with a litany of unknowns that are out of our control. That’s just prison. The Mayor knows that now, and he has started to make some small changes to work on his feelings. I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to the law library, I don’t know if one or both of us will be transferred soon, but I do know that whatever happens, we’ll know how to recognize AD and take steps toward addressing it. And that’s a pretty good start.
Prison Health News 