Deliver Them, O Lord, Who Are Mentally Ill. Deliver Them from Jail

When Jesus healed lepers, it was not their sins, but the sins of the community from which they were delivered. Lepers were thrown on the garbage heap. Literally, they lived in the dump. The people were afraid of them and wanted them simply to go away.

People who are severely mentally ill are today's lepers. I am not talking about the subjects of anti-stigma campaigns, the respectably depressed middle class. I mean the poor, the homeless, the uninsured who are actually no more violent than anybody else. But people are afraid of psychosis, voices, strange behavior. The community wants them simply to go away.

For people who are homeless and uninsured, the only place they can receive treatment for their psychosis, the only way to get the meds that relieve them of their voices is by committing a crime. We don't have hospitals anymore. We have jails.

Jail is a terrible place to receive mental health services. Mostly, people sit in cells, often in isolation, and just get worse.

But that is the choice that our society has made. It's complicated, sure, it's complicated. The complications give us cover for not making another choice. Like, housing.

Sometimes deliverance, the kind of deliverance that Jesus offers, is literal, is the opening of jail doors.