Mental Health Care For Prisoners Could Prevent Rearrest, But Prisons Aren’t Designed For Rehabilitation [HuffingtonPost.com]

Mental health conditions are more common among prisoners than in the general population. Estimates suggest that as many as 26 percent of state and federal prisoners suffer from at least one mental illness, compared with nine percent or less in the general population. And prisoners with untreated mental illness are more likely to be arrested again after they are released.

But prisoners’ access to health care, including mental health care, varies from prison to prison. This is partly because funding varies annually due to budget restrictions and changing policies requiring use of funds for other purposes. And public support for rehabilitation is constantly fluctuating. As you can imagine, many people consider mental health treatment among prisoners to be a low funding priority compared to other federal programs, such as college student financial aid.

As a researcher in the emerging field of correctional health, I have spent many hours with inmates and the physicians who treat them. With mental illness so prevalent in U.S. prisoners, the ability to access quality mental health care is critical. It can help inmates regain control over their lives, and may lead to better individual and public safety outcomes upon release from prison.

But even though mental illness is consistently associated with criminal behavior, these conditions are largely undertreated in our prison system. Prisons were designed to incapacitate inmates, not to rehabilitate them. They are underfunded, and they provide poor working conditions for health care providers and environments that can exacerbate (or perhaps even lead to) mental illnesses.