Medicalizing and Criminalizing Mental Health

Individuals experiencing difficulties while living with a mental health diagnosis are often picked up by law enforcement. They are then taken – as if by coin toss – either to jail or to a hospital. Recent policies in the United States have played a hand in deepening mental health stigma and widening the gap between care that is needed and imposed interventions. This session will explore the way mental illness has routinely been both medicalized and criminalized, the impact of incarceration on mental health at large, and what work is being done to promote harm reduction in New York City and beyond.

Event Information

Free and open to the public; registration required. For more information, please visit the event webpage or email mhe_ethics@cumc.columbia.edu. Hosted by the Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics at Columbia University.