Deinstitutionalization to reinstitutionalization : correctional mental health services.

              Deinstitutionalization to Reinstitutionalization
Correctional Mental Health Services
by
Robert J. Powitzky, Ph.D.
THE PROBLEM
Nationwide:
In September 2006, the Bureau of Justice Statistics within the United States Department of Justice issued a report based on a national study that concluded that more than half of all prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem. The study found that 56% of state prisoners, 45% of federal prisoners, and 64% of local jail inmates reported that they had a recent history or symptoms of mental disorders that occurred in the last year (which is not necessarily the equivalent of an official diagnosis of mental illness). Female inmates had higher rates than male inmates. About one in three state prisoners, one in four federal prisoners, and one in six jail inmates with mental health problems reported that they had received mental health treatment since admission. Nearly 63% of state prisoners who had reported a mental health problem had also reported they used drugs in the month before their arrest (compared to 49% of those without a mental health problem). State prisoners who had a mental health problem were twice as likely as those without such a problem to have been homeless in the year before their arrest (13% vs. 6%), and twice as likely to have been injured in a fight since admission (20% vs. 10%). Doris L. James & Lauren E. Glaze, Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates, Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice (Sept. 2006) (NCJ 213600), http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/mhppji.htm. In addition, a recent PBS TV documentary, entitled “The New Asylum,” has succinctly presented this crisis that has affected all states, and CBS’ more recent (February 11, 2007) “60 Minutes” segment on Michigan’s problems with mentally ill inmates gives a vivid picture of the consequences of ignoring this national problem (http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2458916n).
Oklahoma’s Challenge:
Oklahoma is just now experiencing this phenomenon that other states have been experiencing for over two decades: jails and prisons receiving increasing numbers of persons with mental illness. During the last two decades, the Oklahoma’s state mental hospitals were being closed, theoretically to take advantage of the newly developed and less expensive medications that would allow persons with mental illness to function in the community rather than being warehoused in hospital settings. Unfortunately, the resources and planning necessary to turn this theory work into action were not in place. As a result many individuals with mental illness found themselves in conflict with the law as a direct consequence of their untreated mental illness. Thus jails and prisons soon became major providers of mental health treatment, the “New Asylums.”