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When I was incarcerated in prison, I was placed in solitary confinement. I was placed in a cell next to a white boy that was crying. As I started to dose off, I heard other inmates screaming that another inmate was cutting up. I then jumped out of bed and peeked into the white boy's cell and he was slashing his wrists and crying, saying that he wanted to die and tears were coming out of his eyes. I then knew that he was trying to kill himself.

I called him over to his cell's bars. When he did come, I asked him what was the matter. He told me that he was depressed, so I asked the white boy to come with me to the yard in the morning and he agreed.

When the next morning came, I was let out for the yard. The white boy was walking around. I joined him and we talked. I asked him why he was trying to kill himself and he told me that he was raped in prison and that when he was younger, he was sexually molested by his father and physically abused. I told him that he does not need to take his own life. He told me that he was suicidal and that he tried to kill himself in the past. I told him to be strong and that everything was going to be okay.

I think about the times when I was suicidal and feeling depressed after my father died. I lost another part of me. I couldn't accept the fact. I was becoming suicidal and that hurt even more.

I had a lot on my mind when I went to the Box. I felt hurt and disgraced and I know I was becoming more depressed and lonely.

I was in the Box for a year. I didn't know who I could trust, so I bottled up my feelings and hid them in the back of my mind. As the days went by, I was becoming more depressed and suicidal. I was looking for an escape route, so I started planning to kill myself.

I've seen mentally ill inmates being treated like animals that it made me even more depressed. My suicidal desires started to build up. I even heard comments from other correction officers that the mentally ill inmates in the box should be treated like dirt.

Being in the Box made me feel like I was going to die at any second. When it came time for yard, I would walk around plotting my death. At that very moment, nobody existed to me and I didn't care about anything except dying and taking my own life. I was going to do it.

The Box was a total mess. You had correction officers mistreating the mentally ill that would lead them to harming themselves. The Box is like walking in a hell hole. Correction officers laugh and talk about how they made a mentally ill inmate attempt suicide.

It's so hard to explain the pain that mentally ill inmates go through in the Box. I tried many times to assist people that were in the Box with their mental health problems. It really is a total nightmare.

If we all, as one people—brothers and sisters, black or white—fight for the rights of mentally ill inmates in the Box and stop the correction officers from abusing them, [it could save lives].