While the United States continues to have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, a staggering 25 percent of the world's prisoner population, approximately 20 percent of all US prisoners, have some sort of mental illness. By the time that prisoners serve their time, almost 75 percent of female and 63 percent of male inmates will suffer from some sort of mental problem. Most of these include psychotic disorders and mood disorders, mainly including schizophrenia, depression and bipolar disorder. Individuals with mental disorders are more likely to put into a prison rather than a mental institution because of a process that began in the 60's known as de-institutionalization.
This initiative was taken by many states to reduce the number of mental patients because it was believed that patients were better off in community support groups rather institutions. However, this was quickly brought down with the fact that the government didn't properly fund the need for these community support groups. States would cut the budgets for the government institutions but wouldn't appropriate the money towards the community groups. So, inevitably, those who were released and not helped by support groups ended up incarcerated again. The effect prison has on those with mental illnesses before they go into prison has been a topic that has gained lots of attention, and studies show that they generally become either overly passive, withdraw themselves from everything or are dependent. Others may be easily agitated, violent or attempt to hurt themselves in non-suicidal ways. Often times, these prisoners are punished for their symptoms with nothing being done to address their disorder.
In "Estelle vs. Gamble", the Supreme Court ruled that prison officials had to adequate themselves to prisoners' disorders according to the Eighth Amendment. One of the critical issues about our mental health programs in our prison system is that we attempt to get smart about their disorder through intimidation and this often results in threats towards security officials, the jeopardizing of safety officials' lives and the mounting costs of human and financial resources. The issue needs to be addressed; however we're going about it the wrong way. Instead of just being released into communities hoping these support groups will help them because many won't, these newly released patients end up incarcerated again because they can't find help for their disorder and don't know anything better than prison because at least it's a place to stay and they have something to occupy themselves.
It's an extremely unfortunate reality for those with mental disorders in our national prison system at all levels, so there needs to be a real shift in the way we maintain and help these inmates because they are at real jeopardy to hurt others if they aren't given remediation because some of them have extreme impulse disorders which could result in violent confrontation. These prisoners shouldn't be considered a burden because most develop these disorders from their time in prison and so then they often go untreated through their time and then you release them without even knowing that they had a disorder or developed because prison officials don't care, to them it looks bad on reports and stuff for having more mental patients. All in all, the fact these prisoners go unnoticed and untreated about their disorders is absurd, and it's a serious issue that plagues our prison system.
