Austin man’s suicide in jail after seeking medical care raises a question: Why was he there?
If he had any remaining doubt that JJ needed hospital care, it surely evaporated as Mark Bell chased his brother down the I-35 access road on the evening of Feb. 7. Bell had been driving JJ to the Sobering Center on 12th and Sabine when his brother jumped from the car at a stoplight.
Bell checked his brother into the Dell Seton Medical Center. Before he left he spoke with a nurse."I said, 'Look, my brother is a schizophrenic. And he is a drug addict.' I said, 'He's been out of touch with reality, probably for a few days now. And he's suicidal. You need to keep him here. You need to detox him. Sedate him, restrain him. Do not let him out of here until he is sober though.' And the nurse said, 'I'll take care of your brother.
TCSO spokesperson Kristen Dark stresses that Travis County is not necessarily part of the rising trend of jail suicides. She told us there were four suicides in 2021. In 2020, the jail had none; in 2019, it had two. Meanwhile, from 2018 to 2020, deputies stopped 92 suicide attempts. "I'm not able to speak on the specifics of many, if not all, of our suicide cases because of the fact that I can't reveal HIPAA information," Dark said."So much of what happens in those situations involves the health and the medical conditions of our inmates. I can't go there, that's private information. I can't give criminal history and I can't talk about anything related to their medical condition.
Of course, mental illness in county jails – and everywhere – is very closely correlated with substance use disorders, because mentally ill people use illegal substances to self-medicate. A 2018 study found that 87% of county jail inmates – almost 9 out of 10 – had some kind of substance use disorder. A large number of these also suffered from mental health issues.
As such, Indra's is a home base for Melanie Maxwell. Maxwell helped organize the memorial for JJ, whom she met running coffee and snack concessions at festivals across the state."It can be really stressful, catering and getting set up to do festivals," Maxwell said."I'm usually running late, I'm just not really present in the space yet. And he's someone that the second we would see him and connect with him, it was like, 'Okay, we're home.
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