COUNTERPOINT
Revolving door to oblivion
By Robert M. Rees
Forty-year-old Christie, who asked that her last name not be used here, has some problems. She has been HIV-positive since 1989. She suffers posttraumatic stress as a result of having been abused when she was 9. She shows the effects of a head injury that put her into a coma for four months when she was 16.
A neuropsychological evaluation at Queen's Medical Center in 1997 concluded, "The primary concern here ... is of a woman who appears to be clinically psychotic."
While Christie was in jail in 1999, a psychiatrist wrote, "She has suicidal tendencies."
As if stuck in a revolving door, Christie is in and out of jail. When out, she turns as many as 25 tricks a night to finance whatever relief for depression she gains from cocaine.
She tried to get help from the state's Department of Human Services when she was last out, but was told she would have to wait or pay her own way. Her husband, Brad, remembers how "she looked and acted like a crazy lady ... and could not make any sense at all."
When the Hawai'i Paroling Authority revoked her parole in early 2001 on drug and prostitution charges, it recommended that she "participate in mental health counseling" while doing time at the Women's Community Correctional Center.
However, it was thanks only to a court order that Christie was sent to the Hawai'i State Hospital for two weeks of evaluation in April 2001. There, placed on antidepressants that included Zoloft, she functioned well. Recalls Christie, "I felt good."
The hospital, however, was in the throes of false economizing. Because Christie was feeling better, she was returned to prison.
Back at WCCC, Christie reached out for help, but got very little. She wrote to her husband, "I went and talked to a lady (in the medical unit) and she told me the Parole Board cannot recommend that I get mental counseling."
Incredibly, the psychiatrist at WCCC, a Dr. Malerick, took Christie off Zoloft. Christie regressed into depression, and on April 13 of this year, she wrote to the physician, "I am asking for help for the last time."
The response was, "No medications are needed at this time."
On April 18, Christie tried to kill herself.
Both the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai'i and Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland had written to the Corrections Health Care Administrator, Wes Mun, on Christie's behalf.
Ironically, Mun responded to Chun Oakland in defense of Christie's treatment on the very day that Christie attempted suicide. "It has been determined," wrote Mun, "that (Christie's) treating psychiatrist discontinued her medication (Zoloft) as a safety precaution."
That is, the prison was concerned that Christie might be hoarding Zoloft for a suicide attempt. The solution was to deny her the one drug that helped her not want to kill herself.
On May 13, Christie again tried to kill herself.
When asked about this sequence of horror, Mun noted that Dr. Malerick has moved to the Mainland for "forensic training," and that a new psychiatrist is evaluating Christie's situation.
Christie, however, sitting in the visitor's yard, cries that the new psychiatrist has declined to prescribe Zoloft.
Not to worry, responds Mun. Every inmate can pay for a second medical opinion from a private physician and, if a drug is prescribed, pay for it herself.
Mun, in the style of a well-protected bureaucrat, adds, "We are waiting to help."
Robert M. Rees is moderator of 'Olelo Television's "Counterpoint" and Hawai'i Public Radio's "Talk of the Islands."
