Summary Of Inside A Hospital For The Criminally Insane

During treatment, the criminally insane are cared for by nurses, psychiatrists and other hospital administrators. For the treatments to be effective, the hospital staff must adapt to the way of life in the psychiatric hospital. In the article “Inside a hospital for the criminally insane” by Caitlin Dickson, posted on The Daily Beast, Dickson shares her readings of a book written by Dr. Stephen Seager about the inside of the Napa State Hospital. Napa State Hospital is home to approximately 12,000 patients and a majority of the patients are rapists, killers and mass murderers (TheDailyBeast). Everyday the hospital staff endures violence and personalities of the patients. Seager tells a story about his first day working at the hospital and ending

In the journal article written by Taylor & Francis called “Providing culturally competent care for criminally insane inmates” it discusses the characteristics and the familiarities that nurses and hospital staff must have and provide while working in a psychiatric hospital for criminally insane persons. The hospital staff must “become familiar with definitions and concepts that define cultural competence” (Taylor & Francis 2). They must self examine their personal prejudices, biases, their possible racism and their own self history of interactions with other cultures as well as knowing he patients' cultures (Taylor & Francis 2). It is believed that a patient's illness is to be a cultural or sociological label. (Taylor & Francis 2). This means that not only must the patients learn to be “normal” but the staff must learn to be “insane”. The hospital staff must know and realize and take into account the cultural reasons and other aspects of the patients to be able to care for them, which helps in the recovery and treatment process of one day conditionally releasing the

The mandates treatment consists of adherence to medications, attendance at treatment groups, reporting to a probation office, having firearm restrictions and abiding by them, and absolute abstinence from all drugs and alcohol (Vitacco 1). This mandated treatment is put in place to reduce the risk of patients being violent again and “general recidivism” (Vitacco 1). If the patient fails to be apart of the mandated treatment then he or she will be revoked of their conditional release and be returned to hospitalization and receive mandatory treatment there. In a 2005 case, State v. Klein, the Washington Supreme Court ruled “diagnoses of polysubstance dependence and personality disorder met the definition of a mental disorder for the purpose of continued confinement of an insanity acquittee” (Vitacco 2). The Georgia Supreme Court also agreed on the same ruling in Dupree vs. Shwarzkoph in 2011. (Vitacco 2). Patients that are still dependent on any substance whether it be prescription or not are not subject to receiving conditional release and must stay in hospitalization until he or she is independent from the substance. In a study completed by Anthony Jorm and K.M. Griffiths they determined that the biomedical conceptualizations are not the major cause of stigma. The cause of stigma was determined to be defined by the behavior associated with the mental illness and the belief of personal