Lost in Paradise

Lost in Paradise: One Incarcerated Person’s Search for a Mental Health Solution

By Aron Kumar Roy

As he walked into a computer coding study group at San Quentin, Matthew Christian Paradise easily commanded the attention of his peers. Upon hearing his name, the leader of the group said, “Oh, you’re Matt Paradise. We’ve heard so much about you!” Paradise flashed a smile. A tall white man, Paradise looks like an all-American guy who hasn’t had any struggles in life. Paradise took his seat and started to analyze computer code. On the surface, computer code seems like it should be easy to understand because the words are all in English, but to the layperson, it’s a convoluted mess. Periods, semicolons, commas, and brackets fill in spaces that regulation English would never allow. Yet each one needs to be perfectly placed for the code to do its job.

Paradise once thought that life was easy to decode. Once he started dealing with mental health issues, he realized how many different components need to line up for things to work right. Sometimes it’s as simple as a comma that should have been a period, but sometimes the fix is more complex. Paradise is serving a 16-year term for second-degree robbery. He has struggled with mental health issues and has tried to commit suicide several times.

“I went through a very difficult time,” he says. “My wife left me and didn’t want anything to do with me. I was alone in California, because I was born in Washington state. I had nobody to visit me or comfort me. I had all these years to do in prison on a level three mainline yard. Prison got very dark and ugly for a while.”

Dealing with mental health issues and incarceration at the same time is not easy, even for a man who on the surface appears so self-assured and handsome. One prison where Paradise was serving placed him in its Enhanced Outpatient Program (EOP), a fancy name for mental health treatment. Generally EOP participants are not housed with the general population.

He remained in EOP after his transfer to San Quentin; here, EOP participants receive a higher level of care than other incarcerated individuals.

Paradise credits his five years in EOP with helping him on the path to health. Crucially, EOP provided Paradise with Prozac, which he says eases the pain of his depression. “Everything about EOP is designed with healing, growth, and rehabilitation in mind,” Paradise says.

In addition to medication, EOP provides incarcerated people with the opportunity to participate in a wide range of rehabilitative groups and services, from art therapy to anger management training, from depression groups to positive psychology classes. Those programs have helped him understand how he got where he is.

Paradise and his sibling suffered verbal and physical abuse from their father while growing up.

“That’s what I remember most, the slap on the back of the head,” he says, “and a comment or question about me being stupid and messing up.”

EOP has showed him how his abusive and traumatic upbringing added to his mental illness, he says. “That contributed to my drug and alcohol use to numb my suffering, which developed into an out-of-control addiction, which was a direct cause to me committing my crime, because I could no longer support my addiction.”

His mental health issues came to a head one Christmas morning when his mother announced that she was leaving his father and taking the kids. Paradise began to steal, fight, listen to hateful music, smoke, drink and fail classes. After a particularly intense argument with his mother and sister, he even attempted suicide.

“I was officially fed up with everyone and everything in life,” he says. “Particularly I was fed up with my mom. I was going to kill myself and make it so that my mom was the one who found me.” He swallowed hundreds of prescription and over-the-counter pills that night, and she did. He woke up three days later to the sight of his mom’s face.

Somehow Surviving

Even though he survived, Paradise still went back to his troublemaking ways— and eventually got locked up.

That’s when he learned how incarcerated culture stigmatizes people with mental health issues.

“My stress level went up and so did my apparent symptoms of longstanding mental illness that I had covered up with street drugs,” Paradise says. “I was instructed by career criminals that I don’t want to be like those ‘J-cats’ who take psych meds and smear feces on the wall.”

As the months passed, Paradise’s symptoms worsened. The stress of fighting his case from county jail led him to what he describes as a complete breakdown.

“The people who were associated with me were quite upset that I had not gone along with their instructions,” Paradise says. “They warned me that I would be screwed when I go to prison because I would be flagged by the homeboys as no good.”

The scare tactics didn’t sway Paradise from continuing treatment. Upon his arrival in prison, he learned that he had rights as a mental health patient—that the horror stories the incarcerated spun “were just a myth.” Which is not to say that prison was any better.

Entering a Nightmare

He describes his time at reception in High Desert State Prison as a nightmare.

“It was violent, ugly, plagued by machismo staff and inmates,” he says. “Food was scarce and miserable.” Overwhelmed, Paradise again attempted suicide—several times. That’s what finally got him placed in EOP and what finally led to his diagnosis: Bipolar II–Depressive Type

At San Quentin, EOP participants now live in a specially designed dormitory in H-unit. In 2018, CDCR integrated participants in the EOP program with the general population. Previously, participants in the program were either isolated in their own facilities or housed on Sensitive Needs Yards.

Unlike the main cellblocks, where the incarcerated typically sleep on bunk beds and share cramped cells with another incarcerated person, the incarcerated people in an EOP dormitory do not have to share their individual living area, just the main “dayroom” and the bathrooms. This arrangement helps ensure that overcrowded living quarters do not exacerbate any mental problems they may have. (Not having to share a bunk with another person is not a feature of all EOP programs in the state.) And the increased integration means that participants in the EOP program have the opportunity to be housed in prisons that may be closer to their homes or at facilities with increased opportunities for non-mental-healthrelated rehabilitative programs.

A Better Life on the Yard

Despite the better living situation, the yard integration was not easy for Paradise. According to Paradise, soon after the arrival of EOP participants at San Quentin, one man was attacked by several men in general population. “Now that we are coming up on two years of yard integration, things are really great,” says Paradise. “The people I knew who were highly upset and on edge in the mainline are now happy-go-lucky full-programmers who interact with everyone, regardless of their prison classification. I can see obvious change in them.”

Paradise’s father also decided to work on himself by going to therapy. After working on personal healing, Paradise and his father were able to fix their relationship.

“One really interesting thing about me coming to prison is it triggered a family crisis,” says Paradise. “Everyone suddenly woke up and realized we have a big problem: ‘Matthew’s in trouble and we all need some help, not just him.’ ”

That included a lengthy and emotional conversation with his father about his childhood. It was during this conversation that they decided to work on having a positive relationship. Paradise’s father supports his mental health treatment and is there to give him strength when he is having a tough time.

Paradise, originally from Walla Walla, Wash., may have to serve his parole in California, even though his family and support network are two states away. However the situation plays out, Paradise is optimistic about the future. If he ends up staying in California, he hopes he’ll be able to complete an A.A. degree through PUP (Prison University Project). Life after prison may not always be easy for Paradise. Dealing with mental health issues can be a recurring challenge throughout life. “Either way, I know I’m going to be all right,” Paradise says, “because now I know that I have to take care of my mental health.”