Correctional Mental Health

Correctional Mental Health is a broad-based, balanced guide for students who are learning to treat criminal offenders in a correctional mental health practice. Featuring a wide selection of readings, this edited text offers a thorough grounding in theory, current research, professional practice, and clinical experience. It emphasizes a biopsychosocial approach to caring for the estimated 20% of all U.S. prisoners who have a serious mental disorder. Providing a balance between theoretical and practical perspectives throughout, the text also provides readers with a big-picture framework for assessing current correctional mental health and criminal justice issues, offering clear strategies for addressing these challenges.

The first practical, clinical guidebook on correctional mental health care that uses hypothetical case vignettes to illustrate important points, the "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" is designed to assist mental health professionals in providing effective care to inmates and understanding both the unique living environment and stressors faced by inmates in a variety of correctional settings and the legal context in which they provide that care. Each of 12 fascinating chapters written by 26 recognized experts is clearly organized by overview, clinical case vignette, and key summary points, following the individual from arrest through probation. The "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" combines basic background information for providers new to the world of corrections with more advanced material for seasoned correctional providers, covering topics such as medication management, malingering, developmentally disabled inmates, female inmates, and the complex legal issues regarding the unique and separate constitutional standard of care within correctional settings. Incorporating various viewpoints on potentially controversial issues and including extensive legal and clinical references that reflect current trends in correctional psychiatry, the "Handbook of Correctional Mental Health" has a broad multidisciplinary scope and will appeal to psychiatrists and psychologists, social workers, nurses, attorneys and judges, and correctional officers and administrators.

Correctional Mental Health is a broad-based, balanced guide for students who are learning to treat criminal offenders in a correctional mental health practice. Featuring a wide selection of readings, this edited text offers a thorough grounding in theory, current research, professional practice, and clinical experience. It emphasizes a biopsychosocial approach to caring for the estimated 20% of all U.S. prisoners who have a serious mental disorder. Providing a balance between theoretical and practical perspectives throughout, the text also provides readers with a big-picture framework for assessing current correctional mental health and criminal justice issues, offering clear strategies for addressing these challenges.

This book is well suited to readers dealing with correctional issues in today's complex global society. Given the task of providing adequate mental health care to the burgeoning U.S. prison population, including those thousands with serious mental illnesses who have defaulted from the nation's disjointed mental health systems, the book provides a consideration of approaches and ideas beyond those generated in the domestic academic-practitioner community, including the mental health concerns that transcend borders and national sovereignty. In this category are the treatment and management of te.

Over the past four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both historically and in comparison to that of other developed nations. At far higher rates than the general population, those in or entering U.S. jails and prisons are prone to many health problems. This is a problem not just for them, but also for the communities from which they come and to which, in nearly all cases, they will return. Health and Incarceration is the summary of a workshop jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) Committee on Law and Justice and the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Board on Health and Select Populations in December 2012. Academics, practitioners, state officials, and nongovernmental organization representatives from the fields of healthcare, prisoner advocacy, and corrections reviewed what is known about these health issues and what appear to be the best opportunities to improve healthcare for those who are now or will be incarcerated. The workshop was designed as a roundtable with brief presentations from 16 experts and time for group discussion. Health and Incarceration reviews what is known about the health of incarcerated individuals, the healthcare they receive, and effects of incarceration on public health. This report identifies opportunities to improve healthcare for these populations and provides a platform for visions of how the world of incarceration health can be a better place.

A Disturbing and Shocking Expose-A Passionate Cry for Reform Prison Madness exposes the brutality and failure of today's correctional system-for all prisoners-but especially the incredible conditions Andured by those suffering from serious mental disorders. "A passionately argued and brilliantly written wake-up call to America about the myriad ways our penal systems brutalize our entire culture. Dr. Kupers not only diagnoses the problem, he also offers a set of solutions. I hope this book will be read by all concerned citizens and voters, for it conveys truths that are vitally important to all of us." —James Gilligan, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, and author of Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic

This collaborative text addresses the full range of issues faced by correctional psychologists and other mental health service providers who offer programs and services within correctional institutions--from critical program development and management issues to specific treatment options for special populations.

The 15 years since publication of the second edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s task force report on psychiatric services in correctional facilities have seen increasing rates of incarceration of mentally ill individuals, continuing criminalization of substance use disorders, and a lack of accessible and appropriate care in the community. The purpose of the new edition, Psychiatric Services in Correctional Facilities, and the aim of the work group that authored it over many years of research, dialogue, and development, is to provide leadership in addressing the needs of the often disenfranchised population of the incarcerated and to provide guidance to mental health clinicians working in correctional settings. Urging an expanded role in leadership and advocacy, the work group members present the foundational principles that apply to providing care in correctional facilities, outline the basic types of services that should be provided, and apply the principles and guidelines previously established to specific disorders, patient populations, treatment modalities, and special needs. Working with these patients and in these settings presents particular challenges that clinicians are unlikely to have encountered elsewhere in practice, such as the use of seclusion and restraint and administrative issues. Psychiatric Services in Correctional Facilities provides critical guidance and support for mental health professionals operating in this often frustrating environment, enabling them to provide both effective treatment and informed advocacy for their patients.