A new grief counseling program is helping people cope with loss in their lives at an Oklahoma prison.
Calm Waters is a nonprofit that provides free grief support groups in Oklahoma schools. This year, the nonprofit expanded its services to include women incarcerated at Mabel Bassett Correctional Center. During a nine to ten-week program, facilitators will hold group sessions inside the prison walls for an hour each week.
Their team is led by Bailey Maxey, who, along with a recovery support specialist from TEEM and the prison’s chaplain, will lead participants through a grief support curriculum designed for incarcerated people.
Maxey said most detainees have a story of grief. Many have never had the opportunity to work through their pain.
“We still have not addressed all of the grief that landed them there in the first place,” Maxey said. “And now we’re compounding with the separation from their family and their support system while they are detained and that is not being addressed either.”
The Calm Waters program is the only of its kind in Oklahoma. A spokesperson for the nonprofit, Abby Dimond, said people behind bars are often overlooked when it comes to mental health care. She said it’s a population that’s sometimes considered “invisible.”
Maxey said the goal is to help lower rates of recidivism, stopping women from getting trapped in a cycle of incarceration.
“Hopefully our programming will help them address the grief that they've experienced that led to the choices that brought them here,” she said. “Then wherever they go from this point on, they'll at least [have] the coping mechanisms, better skills and [a] better understanding of what's going on when they are feeling grief and struggling mentally and emotionally.”
The free grief counseling program at Mabel Bassett is modeled on Calm Waters' work at the Oklahoma County Detention Center for both men and women detainees. With funding from a United Way Wayfinder Innovation Grant, Calm Waters was able to set up the curriculum they now use for both programs. Staff at Mabel Bassett, including previous warden Tamika White, reached out to Calm Waters about initiating the program there after seeing success at the county detention center.
Maxey said inmates at the detention center will take what they learn in the grief groups and bring it back to the people in their “pods," fostering a broader mental health discussion throughout the jail.
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