Specialist care for prisoners?

A. Gibson

correspondence c/o the British Journal of Psychiatry, 17 Belgrave Square, London SW1X 8PG, UK

EDITED BY STANLEY ZAMMIT

In his recent editorial on mental health in prisons Dr Reed (2003) urges, understandably and in most cases correctly, that the quicker that patients with psychosis are transferred to specialist psychiatric care, the better.

However, there are prisoners with schizophrenia, willing to take medication, who survive reasonably comfortably in the prison milieu. Their great fear is that they will be transferred to a special psychiatric hospital; ‘nutted off’ in prisonspeak. They have reason to fear a transfer, for it effectively exchanges a finite sentence for an indefinite one. In the case of those serving a life sentence, it means their fate is in the hands of a mental health review tribunal rather than the Parole Board, the latter, they believe, being less cautious in recommending discharge. As an ex-member of both organisations, I would agree with them.

So, while prison is obviously bad for people with mental illness, hospital is sometimes worse.

REFERENCES

Reed, J. (2003) Mental health care in prisons. British Journal of Psychiatry, 182, 287–288.[Free Full Text]





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