By Genoa Barrow | OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer
When Paul Moore sits beside participants in the bi-weekly Black Men: Alive and Well support group and says he understands what they’re going through, it isn’t faked empathy. Moore really has been there, done that and is still working through stuff.
Professionally, Moore is the program services manager for ONTRACK Program Resources and it’s his job to provide hands-on resources to maintain mental health, financial stability and emotional wellness. Personally, he understands the need and doesn’t shy away from sharing his own experience with mental illness, particularly in Soul Space events, like the men’s support group.
A lot of his issues stem from the trauma of recent incarceration. From poor conditions to having to fight or avoid confrontation with vicious gangs, one cannot go to prison and not be impacted by the experience, Moore said.
When he first got out, Moore would keep his back to the wall and move when walking in public to avoid having people behind him. That was 2018, but he still feels institutionalized in some ways.
“You’re hyper alert the entire time,” he said. “There’s no way you can be like that every damn day for years and decades and not come home with trauma. That’s what I struggle with right now. Chronic anxiety permeates and impacts every part of my life,” he said.
While not an officially recognized psychiatric disorder, the National Incarceration Association identifies post-incarceration syndrome (PICS) as a mental disorder that affects individuals who have been imprisoned and then released back into society. PICS is characterized by a range of psychological, emotional and social difficulties that can arise as a result of being imprisoned, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), difficulty adjusting to life outside of prison, and difficulty forming and maintaining relationships.
Conditions at the Sacramento County Jail were also traumatizing, Moore said.
“If you ever want to see what suffering from a mental illness looks like, go to the county jail,” he said.
“I spent four years in the county jail because the federal system was backed up. When you have a federal case, it takes forever and they contract with Sacramento County Jail. The county jail 10 years ago, and before that, they were understaffed and there were a lot of suicides. You didn’t get a sheet and you didn’t get a pillow, because people were hanging themselves. You couldn’t get a razor because they were cutting themselves. Then people were jumping off the upper tiers so they caged that in and then they kept inmates locked up for a long time.
“Most of my time was (spent) on 23-hour lockdown.” Moore continued. “It wasn’t because I did anything wrong, that’s just standard operation.”
One doesn’t really appreciate the sun and fresh air until there isn’t any for a very long time.
“You’re stuck in that damn 10-story building for four years. That is the plight that most of us endure,” Moore said.
Such lockdowns and solitary confinement have been referred to as “cruel and unusual punishment.” African American Assemblymember Chris Holden (D-Pasadena) attempted to limit the amount of time inmates can be held in isolation, with AB 2632. The effort was vetoed, however, by Gov. Gavin Newsom on September 29, 2022. Assemblymember Holden is attempting a do-over with AB 280, The California Mandela Act, which is included in the California Legislative Black Caucus’ slate of reparations-related bills announced in late January. AB 280 would require detention facilities to develop procedures governing the management of segregated confinement and to be more transparent about how they use confinement by keeping written records.
Trauma from being incarcerated is a real thing, Moore’s boss, Madalynn Rucker said.
“I knew Paul before he was incarcerated, we worked together quite a while back. When I brought him back to work, he was a different person for a minute.
“He’s been here three years now, but when he first came back, just making eye contact was difficult for him. If we were sitting down together talking, he’d be sitting sideways. It’s a little heartbreaking because he’s still struggling, but he’s doing great. We were doing introductions in a meeting one time and he introduced himself and said, ‘Well, I probably shouldn’t say this in front of Madalynn, but I feel like I was meant to do this work and I would do this for free.’”
You Got Me Messed Up
Moore spent much of his incarceration “heavily medicated.”
“They had been medicating the hell out of me,” he said. “I was just paranoid. I couldn’t go out on the yard. It was really, really bad.”
“I’ve been home for five years and it severely impacts my life right now. I have a therapist that I see every Thursday, a brotha, and I run our group here, so that helps.”
Moore also participates in another support group for those who have experienced trauma.
“I’m getting a lot of help and I understand CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, modalities and I practice that with the group. I’m in a very blessed position, but most brothas aren’t.”
Moore calls involvement and engagement in the Black community a life-long passion, but admits he’s historically messed things up.
“That’s always been my heart,” he said of community work. “It was always sabotaged by drugs and drug relapse.”
Doing drugs interfered with his ability to work and be fully there.
“You engage in criminal activities and criminal thinking and then you crash and burn, that’s usually the result of that. For a lot of us, we end up in jail or prison and then we come out and we’re more wounded as a result of that. We don’t get help and sooner or later we relapse again. It’s just a cycle.”
The psychotropic drugs Moore took in prison helped with his anxiety and paranoia.
“It took a while for me to be able to walk out to the yard and interact with folks,” he said. “By the time you’re ready to go home they say, ‘I’ll give you two weeks worth of medication and send your ass home.’ As soon as I got home, I was calling friends up because I was worried about running out of medication.”
Moore also deals with high cholesterol, hypertension and a bevy of other ills that disproportionately besiege older Black men. He juggled those things alongside the stress of trying to acclimate to living outside a jail cell again, getting around to updating his driver’s license, finding a job and checking in with probation officers.
It felt as if the world was closing in on him.
“Then you have to navigate Medi-Cal and that ain’t easy either,” Moore said. “And I’m smart, I’m college-educated at UC Davis and it took a lot of energy to navigate that system in order for me to get the psychotropic drugs that I needed to manage my anxiety and all the other disorders that I was struggling with. That’s huge.”
As a formerly incarcerated individual, Moore was able to see a therapist after he was released from prison, paid for by his former landlord, the federal government. After he started working again, he got psychiatric help as part of his Kaiser benefits. All of his mental health needs weren’t being met, however, and he learned to advocate for himself and “play the game” in order to get help.
“There’s a fine line between crisis and being 5150,” Moore said.
“5150”refers to California law that allows a person to be temporarily committed if they are perceived to be a threat to themselves or others. The term is also used in urban slang to describe a “crazy” person.
“If you’re 5150, they’re going to lock you up,” Moore said. “I didn’t say I was going to commit suicide. I said, ‘I’ve had suicide attempts years ago and I sometimes I have suicide ideation and I’m just not in a good place and I feel overwhelmed and I’m not getting medication.’”
After that, he was assigned a therapist, who he sees on a weekly basis.
“A lot of folks don’t know how to navigate that system to get those kinds of subcontracts with all these different companies.”
Having been there, Moore is able to aid ONTRACK clients coming up against similar barriers.
“When they come in, we’re teaching them and assisting them in navigating the various systems, whether that’s medication, mental health services, housing, employment, whatever it is. It’s a holistic approach in terms of trying to get folks well. Mental health is about being able to manage all those things successfully. You can crash and burn on just one of those.”
This article is part of OBSERVER Senior Staff Writer Genoa Barrow’s special series, “Head Space: Exploring The Mental Health Needs of Today’s Black Men.” This project is being supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and is part of “Healing California,” a yearlong reporting Ethnic Media Collaborative venture with print, online and broadcast outlets across California. The Sacramento OBSERVER is among the collaborative’s inaugural participants.