Let's Talk About Jails and Mental Health

Really, this is a post for ClinkShrink, but she's been busy with other things.  Do you miss her? Let me invite you to listen to Clink's interview on Tier Talk/Corrections One, where she was interviewed aboutAre Prisons Turning Into Mental Health Hospitals? Yesterday, I heard Dominic Sisti talk at Sheppard Pratt Hospital about mental health and incarceration: Dr. Sisti is the director of the Scattergood program for the Applied Ethics of Behavioral Health Care at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was an undergraduate just a few (hmmm) years ago.  I tweeted the lecture, as best as I could, along with photos of some of the slides, so do check out the hodgepodge of venting that ismy twitter feed.  I want to use this opportunity to talk a little about the highly publicized statistics that many many people in jails and prisons are suffering from mental illness.  Many believe that correctional facilities are the new psychiatric facilities.  Why is this?~Dr. Sisti and theTreatment Advocacy Center, and many others, will contend that part of the issue is that state hospitals have closed their beds without providing for adequate community services, so this represents a "transfer" of people from one institution to another. I will add:~Many people have psychiatric problems -- per NAMI, 1 in 5 in any given year --so we certainly would expect some people in jails and prisons to have mental disorders.~Mental illness often co-occurs with substance ...
Source: Shrink Rap - Category: Psychiatry Authors: Source Type: blogs