Sisyphus and Suicide: The Mental Health Crisis That Follows Prison

by Lauren Boyer

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According to Greek myth, Sisyphus was the king of Corinth who, after cheating Death and Hades, was sent to the lowest hell for an eternity of meaningless toil. His task? To roll a boulder up a mountain, only for it to falll to the bottom a split hair from the top.

Sisyphus is not alone in his sentence of endless disappointment. Many felons today face similar feelings of futility. Instead of a discouraging boulder, they face hardships like starvation and homelessness. When put up against the daily challenges of finding housing, getting enough food, restoring relationships, and getting a job, prison almost seems easier. Not only are these difficulties given added boundaries by felons’ “jailbird” status, but the mental health of felons is at added risk as well. The pressure of normal life is often dangerous for felons, whose mental health is already disturbed by crime and prison life. Without access to therapy, not only is rehabilitation difficult, but survival is also under threat. 

The scope of this mental health crisis is wide. There are over two million people incarcerated in the United States. 95% of them will be released. That’s a lot of people undergoing re-entry. The stakes are high if they are not properly prepared for this radical transition. 

A prison sentence shouldn’t be a death sentence. So why has it become that way for so many people? Why is the risk of fatal drug overdose 129 times higher for individuals undergoing re-entry?

The answer is simple and complex. It’s the mental health crisis ignored behind bars, the prison conditions that create it, the childhood that established the prison situation…shall I go on?

.Mental health often operates cyclically, with highs and lows repeating themselves. The question is where does it stop? Where better than the prisons? Where better than where people are at their worst, where they are starving for friendly social interaction, where the state has left them for years in a cell demanding they “fix” themselves?

What did Sisyphus think of when he rolled that boulder? Could a change of perspective have changed his feelings of hopelessness? That’s why cognitive therapy is so important. Think of how much good it would do in the prisons. How many lives it might save, inside the prison and out: of felons, exonerees, and their families and their victims. 

With heightened risk of death by suicide and opioid overdose, re-entry is often linked to isolation, hardship, and a rise in stress. In the United States, around 80% of people undergoing re-entry have a chronic medical, substance abuse, or psychiatric condition. Within prisons and jails, two of every five inhabitants have a history of mental illness. The rate is two times higher than the national average, telling us that perhaps mental illness is one reason why you are more likely to be incarcerated if you have spent time incarcerated before. 

Supports and services that reduce recidivism (the tendency for felons to reoffend) are more likely to be participated in by prisoners who have healthcare coverage. It’s easy to draw the arrow: healthcare helps prevent recidivism, so prisoners should have healthcare. It’s the national interest as well as a personal one. As for being a personal one, why shouldn’t it be? The judge didn’t sentence prisoners to no healthcare!

In order to reduce the troubles of re-entry which can so often lead to recidivism, we should save the millions of people who pass out of those prison gates from the fate of Sisyphus. We should give them the care and direction they need instead of begrudgingly denying them a life after their sentence ends, the chance to change. There should be easy access to medication and support in prison and outside of it.