Mental Illness In Prison Essay

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Recommended: Cognitive behavioral therapy in prisons

Jacqueline Fortune
English 2H - 102844
May 17, 2018 Lack of Mental Health Services Leading to Incarceration
Mental illness in prisons has become prevalent in California. Due to overcrowding in psychiatric hospitals and a lack of public mental health treatments, correctional facilities have replaced mental health care institutions and have become a warehouse for the mentally ill. Those who enter prison with a mental illness find themselves in an environment that curtails liberty and control, ultimately worsening their symptoms concurrently with underdeveloped, inadequate mental health treatment programs that reside in many prisons across the United States. Without proper treatment and adequate care, inmates suffering from mental illness have …show more content…

This program has a multidisciplinary approach in which the inmates are evaluated and treated; this creates a specific program for each individual in which upon completion of the program, inmate-patients will have the coping skills in managing the environment of prisons, an understanding of their illness and be psychiatrically stable (California Department of State Hospitals). Programs that transition inmates into the prison environment and educate the individuals on their illness is crucial in eradicated the massive amounts of unstable mental ill individuals in prison. Therefore, large prisons in California - Avenal State Prisons (ASP), California Correctional Center (CCC), California Men’s Colony (CMC), California Institute for Women (CIW) etc. - must be implement a program that provides unique and accurate to its inmate-patients with a screening technique that uses both experimental and empirical data to determine the best treatment; both clinical and archival data should be used when deciding a treatment plan: archival data has been proven to be just as effective or even better at predictions (Sines). Furthermore, inmate-patients should have the availability to transfer into such a treatment program at any point during the criminal

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