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Health Issues In Mental Health

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Mental health is an important issue within the criminal justice and prison systems as it disproportionately affects those who are imprisoned. Stohr and Walsh (2012) suggest one factor that has contributed to the growing number of mental health issues within the prison population in America where government attempted to move towards half way houses and outpatient facilities instead of mental health hospitals. Yet failures to this deinstitutionalisation movement led to jails and prisons becoming the go to places for mental health patients.

The situation in UK prisons is similar as mental disorder was found in 37% of sentenced male prisoners, 63% of men on remand, 57% of sentenced women prisoners and 76% of women remand prisoners (Birmingham, …show more content…
This can have an impact on the victim's mental health due to the traumatic experience. It was found that 80% of inmates with serious phycological distress were sexually assaulted by another inmate more than once (Beck et al., 2013). One survivor of sexual abuse in prison is quoted in Just Detention International (2013) saying, 'There’s no therapy for rape victims in prison. The prison system is incompetent to handle the mentally ill, and in fact causes the mental illness that it should be treating.'

Another pain faced by prisoners is the loss of free will and autonomy. Sykes (1958) suggests that although some inmates may welcome the strict regime as a way of keeping themselves in check, many inmates express intense hostility towards the rules. Haney (2003) argues that the failure to terminate their isolation at will has negative psychological effects on prisoners. Crewe (2015) found that inmates felt the prison officers had all the …show more content…
Wright et al. (2016) argue that drugs are easy to come by in prisons, lack of structured activity means they are often used. They cite Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons UK (2014) who found that 13% of inmates tested for drugs had developed the drug problem in prison. This shows the harm prison can cause to people who have previous not been involved with drugs. Yet there is a big gap in dual diagnoses services in prison (Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health 2009), so those with mental health issues and new-found drug issues are not getting adequate care for problems the prison environment

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