Mental Health and Prison System

Introduction

United States is the country with a huge number of inmates in their prisons (65,066 prisoners), and 25% of them suffer from depression and mental problems caused by drug use. 8% of inmates have serious mental illness and 40% have mental disorders and personality (whether or not criminally responsible). Therefore, there are almost 14,000 internal, 1,120 mentally ill and 5,600 serious mental disorders. Besides, Prisons recognizes more than 700 mentally handicapped in prisons. Some of them are also mentally ill and some top of everything. The prevalence in prison is 7 times more than in society.

There are growing mentally ill in the street without a care, there is a deficit of resources for support, rehabilitation and functional recovery of chronically ill and a severe lack of devices open and closed community (Reed, Lyne, 1420). In fact almost 64% of mentally ill prisoners are serving sentences for crimes committed against property and 11.10% for crimes against public health. The most violent crimes are very low proportion. The Psychiatric Prison Hospital has 182 patients, whereas in regular prison facilities of the New York there are 1,120 prisoners who have mental illnesses and 5,600 serious mental disorders (Reed, Lyne, 1420). That is, there are many more mentally ill in ordinary prisons in the psychiatric hospital, without being specifically addressed and no people can be considered "dangerous" in that violent for society. The consequences are many more sanctions, limited access to prison benefits (which are based solely on good behavior), no permits or access to third-degree and fulfillment of the sentence in full. For the prisoners who are admitted to the ward, the suicide risk is around 20.6%, assuming that the risk of non-hospitalized inmates is much higher, as admitted in the hospital have special attention, care and monitoring.

Discussion and Analysis

Treatment of Mentally Ill People in Prison

If you think the U.S. healthcare system is functioning poorly, pay attention to mental health care" - calls Steve Leifman, judge the state of Florida and an expert on mental health of prisoners. The overwhelming majority of Americans, paradoxically, undergo "treatment" in prisons and jails, rather than in clinics and medical centers. Moreover, the large psychiatric institutions in the country are not the clinics, but a real prison. It's called New York City Rykers Island. It regularly contains about 3,000 mentally ill inmates (Nurse, Woodcock, Ormsby, 480). Half a century ago in the U.S. there were 600,000 beds for patients suffering from mental illnesses (Nurse, Woodcock, Ormsby, 480)? Reduction of federal and local budgets has led to the fact that the number of seats was reduced to 40 000 beds. And when 80 of the last century, the government began rapidly closing state psychiatric hospitals, it appears that these people have nowhere to go. And without proper treatment and care, many of them were there, which did not even think to go.

In December last year, the Centre of protecting people with disabilities filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Florida, accusing authorities of violating ...