Tag: Mental Illness
A fellow named Jack Kester who lives in an Upper West Side single room occupancy (SRO) building went on a tree-chopping rampage last Thursday, cutting down four trees on his West 94th Street block with a saw while yelling “I’m king of the world” and riding around on a Razor scooter, according to the New […]
On June 18, a disgraced Rikers commanding officer was sentenced to five years in prison for violating the Fourteenth Amendment right of a prisoner to receive attention for serious medical needs. Captain Terrence Pendergrass consciously allowed an inmate named Jason Echevarria to die after the patient poisoned himself. “A man died here, a 25-year-old man, […]
Among the many counterproductive and illogical ways that a city can fill its jails and overburden its criminal justice system is by criminalizing things that homeless people do in order to survive. New York City, perhaps more than any other city, excels at spending money on arrests, prosecutions, and jails, rather than on programs that […]
An ex-Rikers corrections officer says that his boss repeatedly encouraged disciplining inmates off-the-books, and when one mentally ill inmate ingested a detergent ball that contained bleach, the supervisor let the man die a slow and painful death. Raymond Castro testified in court that his former supervisor at Rikers Island, Capt. Terrence Pendergrass, would routinely endorsed keeping inmate […]
Corrections Officer Carol Lackner has been charged with falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing; both charges are related to Lackner’s lying about the circumstances in the death of inmate Jerome Murdough. The two main charges are felonies, but Lackner has also been charged with various misdemeanors. Murdough, a military veteran who battled mental illness […]
In what would is probably safe to assume is a first, a patient who has borderline personality disorder is staging a musical with her therapist. The patient, 49-year-old Jill Powell, and the doctor, 56-year-old Cecilia Dintino, will be performing “Borderline,” their two-person play starting next week. On Thursday, The New York Times ran a feature […]
In 2012, suicide was the second biggest cause of death for people aged 15 to 29 worldwide. A recent study from the World Health Organization provided comparative suicide rates by country. Those with the most suicides per 100,000 people included Russia and surrounding countries, North Korea, India and Japan. More than 800,000 people committed suicide in 2012, according to the WHO report. […]
Police officers beat a handcuffed man on a stretcher, according to two FNDY EMTs, the Daily News reports. The EMTs were called to the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn to restrain an emotionally disturbed patient for transport on July 20th. They described the patient as “combative” and witnessed him spit in the face of an officer. The […]
In Prisoned, a new interactive narrative by German game developer Jakub Juszczak, you are a girl named Judy who is battling depression as she becomes an adult. The world of the game is both an escape and a trap; wandering through a stark landscape you are faced with bleak emotions and loneliness. Indie Statik described the uneasy familiarity […]
Brooklyn artist Marni Kotak, who stirred up controversy in 2011 by giving birth at a gallery, will now wean herself off the psychoactive medications she started taking during her postpartum depression. For six weeks, Kotak will sit in a gallery while taking notes on her fluctuating feelings as she withdraws. The artist’s performance is intended as […]
