Mentally Ill Woman Commits Suicide In Prison

This probably isn't unusual, but the story grabbed at my heart.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/949176.html
As Donna Kidder thumbs through letters, drawings and snapshots from her daughter's life, she keeps hoping to flip a page and somehow find the somber facts to be fiction.

Her firstborn, Nicole Bouleris, disappeared into the confounding mazes of the mental-health and prison systems, where she lost her way and then her life at 29. Officials with the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women say Bouleris wrapped a sheet around her neck and hanged herself from her prison bed, leaving a family wracked with grief, guilt and haunting questions.(much more plus pics at link)

RIP, Nicole.

Just heartbreaking

A truly heartbreaking story.
Reading the mother's thoughts brings tears to my eyes.
May Nicole rest in peace.

I tell ya, it seems I could almost feel my blood pressure rising as I read this story. It's like they think if they punish the mentally ill bad enough maybe we will "snap out of it" or "Learn our lesson" and it'll just go away!

Sadly Nicole is one more victim of the system. Warehousing the mentally ill in jails and prisons while no one on staff is trained or qualified to work with them. Often, prison officials believe many of their mentally ill inmates are malingering so they really don't even have to "cry wolf" before being ignored.

It's time the "system" get their heads out of their a$$es and begin helping (therapy, support groups, meds, coping skills, domestic skills, housing options, job training, help in getting social security disability if the illness is that bad, parenting classes, anger managment, etc..) us while we are being punished so that once returned to society we at least have half a chance of making it.

Society makes people with mental illness feel we have something we should be ashamed of, a character flaw that we choose to ignore. We are nothing but garbage on societies sidewalks and as long as they can continue walking by us without having to touch us or look us in the eye, as long as they can continue pretending they, nor their children, could ever end up like us, nothing is going to change.. nothing.

I pray Nicole has finally found what she has been searching for since she was 15 years old.