A Danger to Self and Others

"A Danger to Self or Others" documents everyday life inside the Chicago Cook County Jail's Mental Health Division - the largest provider of mental health services in the United States - through the personal stories of those in the system. With fewer state mental hospitals and limited resources at the community level, jails increasingly have become a critical provider of mental health services throughout the country. Of the 10,000 men and women held inside the Chicago jail, the largest of its kind in the United States, an estimated 10% suffer from some form of mental illness. In many cases, their trip to the jail marks the first time their disease has been diagnosed. This remarkable, sound-rich documentary follows its characters through various stages of treatment -- from "Receiving," where the staff must perform a kind of triage and make an immediate psychiatric assessment as detainees are first admitted to the jail; to the "Acute Care Unit," where the mental heath team has just a few days to stabilize detainees; to the "Residential Treatment Unit," which offers longer term individual and group therapy; and finally to the release process, which tries to link released detainees with mental health resources on the outside. "A Danger to Self or Others" sheds light on an institution that has become a critical link in America's vast and complicated matrix of mental health services. "A Danger to Self or Others" won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi award; Edward R. Murrow Award; National Mental Health Media Association's Media Award; National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Golden Reel Award. First broadcast on Chicago Public Radio and All Things Considered in 1999.