A note to our listeners, this episode contains a brief mention of suicide.

About 0.7% of the American population is incarcerated, locked up in prisons or jails.

That's more than one in 200 people. Here on our podcast, we're well over 200 episodes in,

and we haven't really talked about life in prison much at all,

or how mental health problems can pave the way to being in prison.

And we certainly haven't talked about what mental health looks like when you're behind bars.

Turns out to be a pretty different approach than what we see here on the outside.

So we're going to talk about that today.

It's Depression Mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here. Dealing with a mental illness while incarcerated is not as easy as going online to find a

therapist that you think you might vibe with. There's no trying them out or doing the same thing

with a psychiatrist or exploring different pharmacological approaches or dipping your toes in

treatment options and trying alternative therapies. No, there's none of that.

Just as you can't choose from different grocery and restaurant options, you just have to eat

what they give you, so too do you just have to take what you can get when it comes to mental

health, make the best of it, and endure. A guy named Brandon Stickney recently reached out to me.

He had read my book, The Hilarious World of Depression, said he enjoyed it, got a lot out of it,

and he emailed me a copy of his book, The Five People You Meet in Prison.

Brandon was a journalist for many years, wrote a popular book about Timothy McVay.

They were from the same town, Lockport, New York.

Brandon has been interviewed on NPR, Time Magazine.

He has a substance use disorder and bipolar disorder, type 1.

Because of his issues, his career ultimately collapsed, his marriage collapsed. He went through 12 addiction recovery programs and 14 addiction rehab facilities.

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