“The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.”

— Joseph Heller, Catch-22

For those of you who are having a bad day, don’t read this.

There are a lot of “experts” on mental health out there. Many of them are practicing psychotherapists who charge upwards of $100-200 per hour either in person or via video for a 45 minute session. They may have an MSW, Counseling degree, M.A. or Ph.D. in Psychology, a Master’s in nursing, or other educational degree plus a license from New York State. They may even be an M.D. and be a psychiatrist. Some have personal analysis, postgraduate training, and experience in hospitals, clinics, rehab centers, nursing homes and prisons.

But, consider this. Our prison system in New York offers virtually no psychiatric care. And, those therapists who I’ve mentioned above? Most of them have no idea what they’re doing. At most, their “patients” feel better for the time during their session. So, of course, they have to return for more sessions like a crack addict.

But, that’s just my opinion and the opinion of many of those who ran psychiatric clinics. Why? Because, it’s not only Donald Trump who suffers from narcissistic injury. For the most part, those who enter “the business” are working through their own problems at the expense of their patients — those who do not understand what actually fosters change. And, by this I’m referring to the therapists. The main business of that business is finding and keeping patients.

So what. Freud bumbled through the fog. Jung was a little more crazy. Werner Erhard should have stuck with selling cars instead of pushing EST.

But, it does matter in the prison system. None of the so-called professionals treat the rampant mental illness in people who — drum roll here — are going to be released into our neighborhoods! Drug dealers, addicts, pedophiles, rapists, and killers. After the prison has worked with them all to make them crazier and seeking revenge. They release them in another form like Soylent Green.

The only psychiatric treatment is “The Box” for bad behavior and drug programs that conduct Pin-the-Tail and Duck-Duck-Goose to help them with their “creativity” to seek minimum wage jobs when they are released — instead of the $20,000 per week they were making if they resume selling drugs.

The few therapists hired by New York State know nothing about treatment in prison, the consultants have never spent one night in prison while they and professors at Columbia, NYU, John Jay, or Harvard spout gibberish and pontificate and have no clue about how to treat the — ready — more than fifty percent of inmates who suffer from mental illness.

The Mexican Mafia, Trinitarios, Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, MS-13, and Hells Angels taught me a few things after D.A. Thomas Spota and the politicians in the Town of Southampton managed to force me into prison for four years. But few, if any, of those running the Hamptons, SoHo or New York State realize the mental illness calamity that they are creating.

And, the inmates, like zombies on The Walking Dead are already being released.

Stay Tuned.