The Forgotten Crisis

“She’s cutting again,” the guard announced with all the enthusiasm of saying, “The Pope is Catholic.” Another day, another self-harm incident; just routine paperwork in a system that has normalized human suffering. Let’s call her Melissa, barely in her twenties and a mother of six children, had added fresh wounds to her collection of self-injuries, carving new lines across arms already mapped with red ropey scars that wind from her wrists to her elbows like a twisted roadmap of pain. This time, the cuts were deep enough to require fourteen staples and a blood transfusion. I’ve lost count of how many times Melissa has hurt herself, and frankly, her arms don’t have much unmarked space left. 

The Paradox of Punishment

Despite her struggles, Melissa is one of the kindest souls behind these walls, always eager to help anyone, willing to give her last commissary item to someone in need, serving as an unofficial violence interrupter who often draws the ire of guards for defusing conflicts they’d rather see escalate. Yet, she battles relentless suicidal ideation, trapped in a devastating cycle: depression leads to self-harm, self-harm leads to the hospital, the hospital leads to solitary confinement, and solitary leads to more punishment. Because in prison, self-harm violates institutional rules, Melissa received a disciplinary infraction that stripped away her phone privileges, visiting rights, recreation time, and commissary access; leaving her unable to call home to hear her children’s voices and receive visitors who might offer comfort, stuck in her cell while everyone else enjoys dayroom socialization or yard time, and prohibited from buying basic snacks that provide small moments of comfort. This is how we criminalize mental illness: by punishing people for their pain. 

Ground Zero for Prevention

Prisons should be ground zero for suicide prevention, yet we remain society’s forgotten population when September arrives each year with its awareness campaigns and purple ribbons. During my nearly nine years in solitary confinement, I too considered ending my life more times than I care to remember, and anyone forced to live in “the hole” who claims they were never suicidal is simply lying to themselves and everyone else. The conditions that breed hopelessness are not accidental; they are systematic, institutional, and entirely preventable.

The Statistics of Suffering

The numbers tell a story that demands attention: incarcerated individuals attempt suicide at rates significantly higher than the general population, with completed suicides occurring at alarming frequencies that would spark national outrage if they happened anywhere else. We face increased risk factors that compound daily; separation from family, overcrowded conditions, limited mental health resources, the trauma of incarceration itself, and the crushing weight of lengthy sentences that steal hope before it can take root. Yet, when September’s suicide prevention campaigns launch with their inspiring messages and resource lists, we are systematically excluded from the conversation, as if our lives carry less value than those on the other side of these walls. 

The Resource Vacuum

While people in the community can download suicide prevention apps, access 24-hour hotlines, or reach trained counselors with a simple phone call, we exist in a resource vacuum where help feels impossibly distant. We don’t have crisis hotlines, suicide prevention apps, or even functioning emergency call buttons in our cells that might summon help during our darkest moments. With only four overworked mental health counselors serving nearly 2,000 incarcerated individuals, their standard response to expressions of suicidal ideation is often nothing more than, “We’ll increase your medication”, as if pills alone could fill the void created by systematic dehumanization and isolation. 

A Call for Revolutionary Compassion

People on the outside who genuinely care about suicide prevention must expand their definition of who deserves to live and receive support. Contact every suicide prevention organization in your community and demand to hear their specific plan of care for incarcerated individuals; because if they don’t have one, they’re contributing to our invisibility. Advocate for increased mental health staffing in correctional facilities, push for policy changes that treat self-harm as a medical crisis rather than a disciplinary infraction, and challenge the notion that punishment should ever take precedence over preservation of human life.

The Time for Action is Now

This September, as purple ribbons flutter and awareness posts flood social media, remember that behind these concrete walls and razor wire live human beings whose pain is just as real, whose lives are just as valuable, and whose deaths are just as preventable as anyone else’s. We can end this epidemic of preventable deaths, but first, society must acknowledge that we exist, that we matter, and that true suicide prevention cannot ignore the most vulnerable among us. Our lives depend on your willingness to see us as more than our worst moments, more than our crimes, more than the numbers on our identification cards; we are human beings worthy of hope, healing, and the chance to live.

Photo Credit: Larry Valenzuela, CalMatters/CatchLight Local