My prison experience

Visiting an inner-city prison as a medical student, I was unsure how I would respond to this mass incarceration of life. The anxiety manifesting in my stomach as I passed through the entrance gate, the fear of how inmates would respond to me and of names they might call. Corridors were cold, stark, echoic, with a constant reminder of inmates' plight to end their lives in the endless safety netting; calls from unknown locations and cells with no relief. I don't have a mental illness, yet I felt anxious and paranoid. It left me very concerned for those that do.