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Living inside a prison, inmates deal with mental health

Times-Tribune - 7/24/2017

July 24--WAYMART

A poster of a sunset over water hangs on the wall of an austere room in the depths of the State Correctional Institution at Waymart.

"Hope is real, help is real, talk to someone, you can get better," it reads.

For the 11 inmates in maroon jumpsuits seated in a semi-circle, it could be a mantra. All 11 are members of the facility's mental health peer support network, who serve at the front line of the prison system's mental illness problem.

"These individuals self-disclose as having a mental illness and are in recovery," said Lynn Patrone, a mental health advocate for the state Department of Corrections. "So they have opened themselves up and have modeled recovery."

Two years after settling a federal lawsuit alleging a "Dickensian nightmare" among the larger state prison system for inmates with serious mental illness, SCI-Waymart's administration recently allowed a tour of the prison's mental health facilities, which staff there touted as premier among the state's corrections system. The prison's facilities were also among the reasons officials successfully implored the state government earlier this year to spare the 420-acre property a budget ax.

"Our staff here and culture here is unlike anywhere else in the state," Ronda Ellett, deputy superintendent for facilities management, said. "They buy into it ... because our staff knows these people are going back. They're going to be on the street. They're going to be our neighbors."

The 2013 lawsuit filed by the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania challenged the state Department of Corrections' use of solitary confinement to house inmates with serious mental illness. A settlement two years later that overhauled the state's policies affecting mentally ill prisoners largely left Waymart unaffected, which the facility's superintendent, Jack Sommers, said reflected the prison's stellar reputation.

"It wasn't such a huge change for us," Ellett said. "Because it's what we do. It's what we did."

However, it did put mental health treatment in the spotlight.

Patrone's group of 11 inmates, all certified peer support specialists, started as a pilot program several years ago. The program took off after the 2015 settlement. Trained in mental health first aid, the specialists calm inmates in crisis. The thinking, Patrone said, is an inmate will have a more frank and honest discussion with another inmate.

"The beauty of this is that it turns their lives around as well as those they're helping," Patrone said.

SCI-Waymart's Forensic Treatment Center, which provides services to all psychiatric inmates in the state system, formerly housed Farview State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital absorbed by the prison in 1995. SCI-Waymart is one of three state prisons licensed to offer mental health services.

With an open dormitory-style floor plan with 90 beds and three day rooms in which daytime television droned on, the Forensic Treatment Center appeared during a recent tour as an ordinary psychiatric hospital, one where patients wore blue jumpsuits.

Inmates needing treatment there typically spend between a month to six months before transfer to a step-down intensive care unit -- intermediate blocks where prisoners still see a treatment team on a regular basis but live in the prison proper.

Thunderclouds threatened from the hallway windows of the muggy prison. Inmates lounged in their beds and watched television in the open layouts of the general population blocks. At one point, rain lashed the facility.

Instead of thunder, conversation rumbled in the stark room where Patrone led a group. The peer support specialists held an exercise in which two people held a conversation while a third acted as a "voice" and interjected noise to distract, similar to someone with a mental illness that causes him or her to hear voices.

Branden, 42, of Snyder County, serving a decades-long sentence for criminal solicitation, has been a peer support specialist for nine months and found joy in the work.

"When you tell them a little bit about how you are and they understand that, years ago, I was in the same place they were," he said. "So it's more of an understanding and a trust thing when you've been there ... it gives me a reason to get up in the morning."

Editor's note: Branden is identified by first name only in accordance with prison policy regarding inmates.

Contact the writer:

jkohut@timesshamrock.com;

570-348-9144;

@jkohutTT on Twitter

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