I'm Doin' Great, Miz Trenton--Revised

Exposition and narration
         I worked for the Prison System for several years before I finally learned all the lessons it had to teach me. I was a young psychologist with a new degree, but the most important lessons came from the job, not the school. After I had been hired and began working with inmates to acess mental status and provide counseling, I found out that most of them, at least the ones that accepted the services of the Psych. Deptment, were very familiar with the procedures of mental health systems and the names of the common drugs precribed for depression, anxiety, and psychosis. Even though my education had prepared me, I had a different perspective than the patients.

Lesson No. 1. The patient is not in my office to be helped by my expertise. He is there to manipulate me to fill his need.

         In group therapy sessions, I had high hopes of enlightening patients about how to correct their behavior so that they would not repeat their crimes. My boss Dr. Macon assured me that long term changes in behavior were more ambitious than the Prison System had envisioned. My job was to help enable the patient to cope with imprisonment.

Lesson No. 2. Long term goals should be relagated to committees and soverigns.
Rising action
         When I began working with Kerson I thought he was hopeless, but as time went by, he really did better. He claimed to have been on medication before he came to prison, so it had gotten continued. He had been released from the Mentally Retarded Offenders Program. However, I found that he had a quick mind, and I determined that I would teach him to read. He had only attended school to the fourth grade. His diagnosis should have been something like Educationally Deprived. He was released from MROP because he cheated on a test according to the record, but he told me another story. He claimed he had walked in on a social worker and an inmate in a highly compromising situation which he wanted to share in. The next day his services in MROP were terminated.
Climax
         He did well in group participating in role playing and honest confrontation. During the five years I worked with him, he endured several set-backs. His brother was killed in a fight with another brother. His sister was shot and killed, and his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Inspite of
those traumatic events, he seemed to mature. He quite taking the anti-depressants and worked steadily in Records Conversion. I was very hopeful when he reported to the group that he would be leaving soon. The group gave him advise and good wishes.

Lesson No. 3 Take your wins where you can get them.

         In Kerson's case I could, indeed, claim a victory. He had responded to counseling and improved his behavior in the Prison System. ResolutionAbout a year after his release, a social worker from Ft. Worth called seeking his medical record. I told her that was held in Huntsville. She was trying to get him into a program with the Department of Human Services that would pay him a stipend to be mentally retarded may have been fulfilling her obligation, too. It saddened me that she may have be costing Kerson all the gains he had made in prison.