Mental Health In Prison Essay

Mental health is defined as being a condition which may impair an individual’s emotional, psychological, and social wellbeing. Mental health can affect how a person thinks, feels and behaves (Department of Health and Human Services, 2017). From the UK population it is suggested that 1 in every 4 people have a psychiatric disorder (Arnett, 2014). In 2017, the prison population of England and Wales was 84,537 (includes pre-trial and remand detainees) an increase of around 20,000 prisoners from the year 2000 (World Prison Brief, 2018). The data here shows that as mental health is becoming more prevalent within society, the prison population is also increasing. The focal point of this essay will be to present the ideology that in late modernity

In the year of 2001, the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, Anne Owen said that prisons had become the default setting for those who suffered from a mental health condition. In support of this, Bass (2018) argues that prisons have now taken over from hospitals as the primary method of managing severe mental illness. Due to a widespread lack of resources in health and social care, the police are often the first agency to come into contact with those experiencing a mental health crisis. It has been found that 40% of incidents that the police deal with include some form of mental health concern, this has risen by 25% in eight years (Quinn et al, 2016). Despite the police dealing with mental health on a day to day basis they do not receive nowhere near enough training in which to respond to the complex issues that are often presented by those with mental health. Pinfold (2003) says that the police often hold stereotypical views in regard to mental health. He says that it is a popular belief amongst police officers that mental health incidents are usually violent and therefore their response is often one which is excessive to the situation that they are presented with. As a response