Why Do We Need Mental Health In Prison

Not many people know that individuals with diagnosed mental illnesses who were found guilty for committing crimes are incarcerated rather than being placed in mental health facilities to get treated. In the prison system, they are not receiving the right treatment, as many of the prison guards are not properly trained to respond to the individuals who are mentally ill. Therefore, individuals with mental health disorders such as, schizophrenia and bipolar becomes worse. After these individuals serve their time, they are released with little to no information about their illnesses and medications. Some of them may return home with their families who may lack understanding of their diagnosis, a few ends up in homeless shelters or the streets,

and some may find themselves re-incarcerated, again. As a nurse, I feel accountable to advocate for these individuals who are not heard and not treated. The purpose of this paper is to provide an awareness of how important it is for the mentally ill to receive the correct treatment no matter what their convictions are, because it is the most humane thing to do.
Initially, we must look at the factors that causes these individuals to get arrested rather than taken to a mental health facility to get the treatment they need.

Two important factors that we must look at; first is our poorly funded mental health care system. In 1963 a Mental Health Act was established to support federal funding for public mental health centers in the United States.
“At some point in the 1970s the decision was made to close state-run mental health institutions. Much of this was motivated by The Community Mental Health Act in 1963. Reports at the time indicated significant abuse of patients and a general lack of credible mental health care. The idea was that funds would be redirected from the states to local communities to manage and monitor the needs of individuals with mental health issues. Unfortunately, this transfer of funds never happened and local communities were simply overwhelmed”. (DeMoss, 2016).
Up until now, there is an apparent lack of funding on mental health institutions. There are shortage of nurses and psychiatrists in mental health facilities, preventing patients to get the right treatment. Second factor we must look at is our poor criminal justice system. According to Dr. Richard

Lamb,
“The criminal justice system, charged by society with the responsibility for removing from the community persons accused of committing serious crimes, sees no alternative but to first place the person in custody in a secure setting then arrange for psychiatric treatment if necessary. If the person is thought to have committed a serious crime, the police and the criminal justice system generally do not want to leave this person in a psychiatric hospital where security may be lax”. (Lamb, H. R. 483).
With the huge responsibility assigned to the law enforcements, they are left accountable to send individuals who committed crimes to jail, no matter what their mental conditions are. There is no process to screen these individuals before they even get incarcerated.
Not many people are aware of what these individuals go through while they are incarcerated. There are very few programs who train police officers/ law enforcements on how to respond to mentally ill who is going through a crisis. According to National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI), “Many reforms are needed. One is nationwide expansion of crisis intervention team (CIT) programs for law enforcement. CIT programs train police officers to respond more safely and humanely to individuals experiencing mental health crises by using “verbal de-escalation” skills and taking them to where they can get medical care rather than to jail. Today, there are approximately 2,800 CIT programs around the country, but they represent only 15% of police jurisdictions”.