I arrived on the same day as Maria. She was shy, withdrawn and reminded me of a fragile bird as she leaned over her hot drink to keep warm. We would talk in the garden, the only place to find any peace, and fantasise about eating lasagne and drinking red wine.
We were in prison. I was on remand awaiting trial. I had been arrested while suffering a psychotic episode – I would be there for six months until the hospital order arrived from the court. It felt like six years.
Everyone had a sad story: domestic abuse, childhood trauma, homelessness. One woman, after losing her son, set herself on fire. Another, also charged with arson, set her house on fire during a psychotic episode. One had attempted suicide with her child in tow. I felt like the odd one out. I had a wonderful childhood; I hadn’t experienced anything traumatic and had never been homeless. But there is no stereotypical prisoner – you can end up in prison regardless of your background. What I did share with the others was that I was severely mentally unwell.
I was on the mental health wing, but there are plenty of ill people on the main wings of prisons too. A recent report from the Centre of Mental Health commissioned by NHS England found that 45% of adults in prison have anxiety or depression, 8% have a diagnosis of psychosis, and 60% have experienced a traumatic brain injury.
Is prison really the best place for people who are mentally unwell? It is difficult to capture just how claustrophobic a prison cell is. “Lock-up!” an officer would bellow, and we would all rush to our cells. There it was just me, my thoughts and four walls. It was impossible to sleep, with the screaming and shouting of other prisoners.
Sometimes, when there were staff shortages, we were locked up for 24 hours a day. I have no doubt that the dehumanising nature of being locked away for most of the day made my mental illness – later diagnosed as bipolar disorder – worse in every possible way. I saw a psychiatrist who started me on anti-psychotic medication, but the delusions that had landed me in prison for arson in the first place grew stronger. I never turned on the television in my cell because my illness made me think the newsreaders were speaking to me. I was too scared to eat anything in case someone had drugged my food.
It is easy to fall into despair in such a situation. I felt suicidal. Two girls on my wing tried to kill themselves while I was there. They were found by staff in time, but many others are not. In the 12 months to March 2021, there were 79 suicides in prisons in England and Wales. The report by the Centre of Mental Health, which used research from the Offender Health Research Network, states that of the 285 self-inflicted deaths occurring in English and Welsh prisons between 2016-2018, 63% of victims had a mental health diagnosis recorded, and 67% had their reception screening carried out by a nurse without mental health qualifications.
Self-harm was rife. My mood grew so low that I self-harmed for the first time. According to government data, there were 55,542 self-harm incidents in prisons in the 12 months to December 2020, with rates especially high among women prisoners.
The only thing that made me feel any better was reading. I would read and reread Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, highlighting the words “he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”. Whether it was Frankl, Donna Tartt or Ian McEwan, books transported me away from my surroundings for a short while. One of the prison officers would bring me books, and chatted to me when I was feeling down. When he was on shift, my mood lifted.
When I found out that the only way to get out of your cell during the day was to work, I did all I could to get a job in the prison library. Prisoners feel worthless and hopeless, with little to provide comfort and intellectual stimulation. Books fill this gap. Some prisoners would come in for a crime series, or looked for prison diaries – perhaps to find out how others had survived. Others would lose themselves in a fantasy series such as Harry Potter or Twilight.
I remember one prisoner animatedly telling me about all the different books she had read while in prison. She was extremely well-read, and I presumed she had brought this love of reading from her life outside. In fact, she had never read a single book before entering prison. This is common. Almost one third of adult prisoners assessed by the Ministry of Justice are below the reading level expected of an 11-year-old. According to the Shannon Trust, which helps rehabilitate prisoners by using inmates who can read to teach those who can’t, 50% of UK prisoners are functionally illiterate.
Of the women remanded by magistrates in England and Wales in 2019, 60% did not ultimately receive a custodial sentence. According to the Centre of Mental Health, this can often do more harm than good as coming to prison, especially on a short sentence, as I did, creates a huge disruption to the life of people who are already extremely vulnerable and unwell. Being on remand is not the answer to an acute episode of mental illness. It is inhumane and impractical to lock someone up who is floridly psychotic; the solutions lie in a better-resourced mental health system that treats the unwell person rather than locking them away. Out of sight, the problem is still there: an acutely unwell individual in need of the right treatment and support.
Maria and I are both out now. I hope she is eating lasagne and drinking red wine. I hope she is free. I hope all the prisoners I met are now receiving the support they need instead of being locked in a cell surrounded by others who also don’t deserve to be there. I hope.
Bryony Friars is a pseudonym. She is a student living in the north of England
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie, and Mind on 0300 123 3393. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
• This article was amended on 10 March 2022. It’s 60% of women remanded by magistrates in England and Wales who do not receive a custodial sentence, not in the UK as an earlier version said. The number of suicides in prisons also relate to England and Wales, not to the UK.
