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Illness In Prisons

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1. General area of investigation The topic I wish to research is prisoners with mental illness and the level of support and treatment they receive. I have started off by looking at the amount of support that prisoners with mental illness receive from both services and the prison staff (correctional officers, psychologists, doctors/nurses, supervisor, etc.). I will further my knowledge by researching the prisoner's and look at their thoughts towards support with mental health, and compare it to the prison staff's assessment. With this research in mind, I hope to get a better understanding of how the prisoners and those involved in delivering support and treatment for prisoners with mental illness feel about the level of support and treatment. …show more content…

I also need to understand where the information from the research is coming from. I anticipate different views from prisoners, correctional officers, doctors, psychiatrists, and those who are in charge of providing the services and treatment. With this in mind, it is important to research all points of view involved in order to get a clear understanding of how those with mental illness are treated and supported in prison. To add on, I need to decipher the information and see what it really means. I have to be able to compare and contrast the different articles to answer my research question. Annotated bibliography Blevins, K. R., & Soderstrom, I. R. (2015). The Mental Health Crisis Grows On: A Descriptive Analysis of DOC Systems in America. Journal Of Offender Rehabilitation, 54(2), 142-160. The services provided to those with mental illness in prison is the subject of this article. The main argument is that prisoners are not receiving adequate services to cope with their mental illness. The article uses information from mental health chief administrators of state prison systems. This is useful to me as it allows a unique point of view of mental illness in prison, which is the ones who are providing it. Brandt, A. a. (2012). Treatment of Persons With Mental Illness …show more content…

This article seems useful to me as it covers a broad range of topics in relation to prisoners with mental illness. The article will also help me refine my topic because it covers mental illness in many ways, which allows me to learn further about prisoners with metal illness in and thus narrow my topic. Galanek, J. j. (2015). Correctional Officers and the Incarcerated Mentally Ill: Responses to Psychiatric Illness in Prison. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 29(1), 116-136. Galanek looks at the relationship between correctional officers and prisoners with mental illnesses. This article will be useful to me as a prisoner will have a different relationship with a correctional officer than a doctor, so new information may come up from the prisoners. This article helped me see this topic in a different way as well, when I first thought of mental illness and prisoners I mainly thought of the medication they receive and treatment from the doctors and psychiatrists. Reingle Gonzalez, J. j., & Connell, N. M. (2014). Mental Health of Prisoners: Identifying Barriers to Mental Health Treatment and Medication Continuity. American Journal Of Public Health, 104(12),

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What can be done The monitoring, prevention and treatment of mental disorders, as well as the promotion of good mental health, are part of the public health goals in prisons. According to World Health Organization (2017), even in resource-limited countries, measures can be taken to improve the mental health of prisoners and prison staffs, which can be adapted to the country’s cultural, social, political and economic environment (WHO, 2017). In the British prisons, some practices and policies have also been implemented, which reflect the positive impacts of prisoners’ mental health and wellbeing. Provide prisoners with appropriate mental health treatment and care.

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More people get incarcerated for non-violent crimes and crimes caused by mental illnesses or drug abuse (Webb, 2009) and because these people get put in regular prisons, instead of in mental health facilities or facilities to help against drug addiction, where they could be treated to further prevent crimes driven by their illness (Webb, 2009), the prisons get overfilled and cannot hold the more ‘important’ prisoners that needed to be locked away from the public. A strong link of the criminal justice process is that the system tries to keep it fair for everyone. Every defendant has the right to an attorney so they can be defended properly and fairly and “Only judges who are adequately informed about a case can effectively control the proceedings and examine evidence” (Tochilovsky, 2002) It is also important for the criminal justice system that those involved show discretion and although this is not always the case, discretion by the judges, police, etc.

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