Jails struggle with mental health patients: Woman gouges out her own eye

Iowa's prisons are feeling the impact of the mental health crisis. Of the 8,283 people in Iowa's prisons, more than half of them have a diagnosis of mental illness.

We spoke with one woman who grew up in Cedar Rapids and fell through the cracks of the system. She wanted to share her story, even though it's not an easy one for her to tell.

Tiffany Carlton has been to the county jail, state prison, hospital and a mental health treatment center in the past six years.

"When I robbed the pharmacies I went to prison for five years and I wasn't hearing voices for a while," said Carlton. "But January 1, 2014 after a visit with my children, I was so delighted and happy and I heard a voice speak to me. It was Jesus. It was a lie."

Carlton is part of the 33% of all inmates whose condition is so severe, they need specialized care.

After serving time for robbery, she got closer to freedom, and further from healthy.

"I told them that I talked to God, I didn't tell them that the voices were very severe. I was lying to myself."

At the halfway house in Cedar Rapids she said she was going to kill herself. They took her to a hospital where she attacked a nurse. That landed her in the Linn County jail where she hurt her sleeping cellmate. Because the voice told her to.

"Told me that she was going to wake up and so I attacked her and had her in a choke hold, forgive me Lord. I hurt her really bad, the officers came in apprehended me and took me to another cell."

While in that other cell, Carlton again listened to the voice. It told her to remove her own eye.

"The voice told me to gouge out my eye and I thought I was ridding the world of Satan. I gouged it out myself and flushed it down the toilet, and I don't remember anything except for being on a gurney."

Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner says the jail is not a treatment facility, and they're not designed for that.

"What happens when someone is incarcerated in the Linn County jail is we provide them a minimal amount of mental health care," said Gardner. "That's all we're equipped to do. And quite honestly we're sometimes hard pressed to be able to do that."

Carlton is telling her story because she wants people like her to get the help they need.

"Mental illness is a horrible thing especially when you listen to the voices in your head," said Carlton