This story was told by a person incarcerated at Fresno County Jail.
Caller: Okay, here is the issue. My name, okay, I’m telling you my name is because, you know, I’m a bad boy. My name is [redacted] I want people to know anyways in case something happens to me. I want them to know I gave back to the community, you know, in some certain way, even if it’s, you know, this way, the smallest way.
Right now, we’re having issues with psychiatry, the psychiatric community here. Because, so, what’s happening is that doctors are afraid to contract the virus, so the psychiatrists, you know, opposed to the psychologist, the – I call them the biologists, the bio-psychiatrist, the one who gives out the meds.
So what’s happening is a lot of us are putting in sick hall requests to have our medications reevaluated or adjusted, and our needs are not being met.
I, myself, have been asking them, because I’m on a medication that’s giving me twitches, and it’s making me feel really awful at nighttime. Okay, it’s Geodon. So, what’s happening is I put a request in to readjust this medication or having to reevaluate my conditions, and it’s not being met because there’s no doctors willing to expose themselves to the risk.
Or having – so quarantine means we can’t leave the tank. So, that’s a very, very big concern for us because all of us who need the medication and need the psychiatric help are not getting it, not receiving it. And It’s been three weeks, you know what I mean?
So, when we’re dealing with the issues that are, you know, happening right now, we need them dealt with right now, not when quarantine is over. I mean, it’s like the Catch-22.
You know, they you know – we have to see a doctor now, but we can’t until the quarantine is over, but then at that point, our issues might be over, or we might do something drastic like a lot of mutilation. Self-mutilations happen here. You know, attempted suicides.
We’re in a cage, so nobody can really attempt suicide without somebody seeing it happening. So, that’s a good thing. However, self-mutilation does happen. And we can’t really contain that as inmates. Somebody might just go under the blankets and start cutting themselves with a piece of, you know, shaving implement, a razor.
Or, you know, our masks have little wires in them. So, what a patient does is he takes the wire out of the mask and uses it to cut himself. You know, because he starts scratching away, and it starts cutting deeper and deeper. And that’s what happens a lot because people are lonely, scared, afraid.
It’s like the community has no, no like concern. I’m sure they do have a concern, but they’re more afraid for themselves than they are for the patients. You know? It sort of seems like kind of a bit of selfishness, you know?
Or it might be a policy set in place where they can’t come and see us, and you know, they’re – they’re, you know they have their hands tied. I’m not sure. Nobody’s telling us.
