Prison Mental Health

The articles I will be looking at in this paper is Mental Health Services for Prisons, published by the American Bar Association in 1978 and Influences of Environmental Factors On Mental Health Within Prisons: Focus Group Study by Jo Nurse, Paul Woodcock, and Jim Ormsby. Both articles focus on mental health and mental health services offered by prisons. The American Bar Association’s article focuses more on the implanting of mental health professional into the prison system so inmates can have better access to treatment instead of being placed on a months-long waiting list. The authors suggest that, by employing psychiatrists, prisons would be better suited to care for their inmates since, despite being incarcerated, they are still entitled

The association then states that, “prisoners do not lose all human and constitutional rights by virtue of their incarceration… therefore it is recommended that the state mental health agency be vested with the control and authority for providing services to prisoners” (American Bar Association, p. 667). For this reason, every prison should be mandated to employee at least one mental health professional to accommodate the needs of inmates and their mental health issues. The prisoners should not lose their right to receive medical health despite their breaking the law and serving time. If a prisoner feels he/she needs mental help then they should be granted it. This leads to their voluntary decision to pursue treatment. The article states that, “mental health services should not be imposed without resort to civil commitment or personal guardianship processes. [felons] have not been sent to prison because they are ‘sick’ or in need of treatment” (American Bar Association, p. 668). This statement suggests that, in the past, prisoners have been forced to participate in rehabilitation programs like drug abuse counseling or other mental health treatments. To combat this, the author states that, along with more prison health services and on-duty psychiatrists, prisons should require

For prisoners, mental health influences resulted from “isolation and lack of mental stimulation, drug misuse, negative relationships with prison staff, bullying, and lack of family contact” (Nurse et al. p. 481). Of these issues, negative relationships with staff members was brought up more frequently. Prisoners reported that negative relationships resulted in higher stress, both for inmates and staff. The article states that for remand inmates (those awaiting trial prior to an actual conviction), sentenced inmates and uniforms staff, “emphasiased the negative effect on prisoners’ mental health of being locked up for as long 23 hours a day” (Nurse et al. p. 481). Being locked up the majority of the day leads to negative psychological effects that then play out in the relationships with staff and inmates who are, in a sense, being driven crazy due to being locked up for extended periods of time. The common suggestion to improve the relationships between staff and inmates was that “staff should have more training and be better valued and that more staff would reduce stress levels” (Nurse et al. p. 481). Reduced stress levels and negative relationships would result in both staff and inmates treating each other better and lead to a more harmonious environment. The authors go on to show that this was not just an isolated issue for one focus group but instead was seen across the majority