Community re-entry preparation/coordination

Author(s):  
Henry A. Dlugacz

The transition from short-term incarceration in jail or longer-term prison sentences back to the community presents substantial challenges for those with mental illness. Approximately 97 percent of all inmates return to the community. This simple reality makes it in society’s enlightened self-interest to be concerned with the readiness of these former inmates to live a productive life. The criminal justice and correctional treatment systems affect an inmate’s behavior and opportunities upon release. Successful reentry planning considers multiple interrelated issues (entitlements, housing, treatment needs, and so forth) when building an individualized plan to address them. It begins at admission (or even sentencing) and continues after release. Rather than considering incarceration to be an isolated event, reentry planning views incarceration as part of a cycle to be disrupted through targeted intervention. Correctional mental health treatment is seen as part of a continuum of care extending to the community. Reentry planning for people with serious mental illness should be a primary focus of correctional mental health care integrated into the treatment function, not an afterthought to be considered only as release is imminent. While acceptance of personal responsibility is a critical antecedent to leading a lawful life, and self-determination a fundamental principle of recovery, it is unrealistic for service providers to rely on the individual to coordinate fragmented public systems. This is the job of those funded to provide services. This chapter presents the current understanding of transition support needs and practices to optimize successful community reentry.

Author(s):  
Henry A. Dlugacz

The transition from short-term incarceration in jail or longer-term prison sentences back to the community presents substantial challenges for those with mental illness. Approximately 97 percent of all inmates return to the community. This simple reality makes it in society’s enlightened self-interest to be concerned with the readiness of these former inmates to live a productive life. The criminal justice and correctional treatment systems affect an inmate’s behavior and opportunities upon release. Successful reentry planning considers multiple interrelated issues (entitlements, housing, treatment needs, and so forth) when building an individualized plan to address them. It begins at admission (or even sentencing) and continues after release. Rather than considering incarceration to be an isolated event, reentry planning views incarceration as part of a cycle to be disrupted through targeted intervention. Correctional mental health treatment is seen as part of a continuum of care extending to the community. Reentry planning for people with serious mental illness should be a primary focus of correctional mental health care integrated into the treatment function, not an afterthought to be considered only as release is imminent. While acceptance of personal responsibility is a critical antecedent to leading a lawful life, and self-determination a fundamental principle of recovery, it is unrealistic for service providers to rely on the individual to coordinate fragmented public systems. This is the job of those funded to provide services. This chapter presents the current understanding of transition support needs and practices to optimize successful community reentry.


Author(s):  
Nancy Wolff

Research in mental health issues in prisoner populations essentially stopped in the mid 1970’s. It is now re-emerging as a critical component of improving mental health care and helping toward recovery for the incarcerated mentally ill. Mental illness, ranging from acute anxiety to schizophrenia, is endemic within prisons and jails. Unlike their free world counterparts, however, incarcerated people have a constitutional right to mental health treatment. Yet, despite the need for and right to mental health treatment, remarkably little reliable and valid evidence is available on the nature and level of mental illness among incarcerated people, the effects of incarceration on symptomatology, the availability and quality of medication, cognitive, and psychosocial treatment for disorders, and how context impacts the effectiveness of the treatment that is available. Evidence is absent because corrections-based research is constrained by regulation, financing, and inexperience. In this chapter, the history of prisoner research and the evolution of federal regulations to protect prisoners as human subjects will be reviewed and then discussed in terms of how regulation has impacted correctional mental health research, after first defining what is meant by research and why research is needed to inform policy and practice decisions. This will be followed by recommendations for building the correctional mental health research evidence base. The intent here is to help researchers, in collaboration with stakeholders, develop, design, and implement research studies, and disseminate evidence to advance science and the quality of care available to incarcerated people with mental illnesses within the current regulatory environment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brea L. Perry ◽  
Emma Frieh ◽  
Eric R. Wright

Mental health services and psychiatric professional values have shifted in the past several decades toward a model of client autonomy and informed consent, at least in principle. However, it is unclear how much has changed in practice, particularly in cases where client behavior poses ethical challenges for clinicians. Drawing on the case of clients’ sexual behavior and contraception use, we examine whether sociological theories of “soft” coercion remain relevant (e.g., therapeutic social control; Horwitz 1982) in contemporary mental health treatment settings. Using structured interview data from 98 men and women with serious mental illness (SMI), we explore client experiences of choice, coercion, and the spaces that lie in between. Patterns in our data confirm Horwitz’s (1982) theory of therapeutic social control but also suggest directions for updating and extending it. Specifically, we identify four strategies used to influence client behavior: coercion, enabling, education, and conciliation. We find that most clients’ experiences reflect elements of ambiguous or limited autonomy, wherein compliance is achieved by invoking therapeutic goals. However, women with SMI disproportionately report experiencing intense persuasion and direct use or threat of force. We argue that it is critical to consider how ostensibly noncoercive and value-free interventions nonetheless reflect the goals and norms of dominant groups.


2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 108-115
Author(s):  
Majella Cahill ◽  
Anne Jackson

AbstractDeveloping effective models of identifying and managing physical ill health amongst mental health service users has become an increasing concern for psychiatric service providers. This article sets out the general professional and Irish statutory obligations to provide physical health monitoring services for individuals with serious mental illness. Review and summary statements are provided in relation to the currently available guidelines on physical health monitoring.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 01-14
Author(s):  
Michael Galvin

We are in an important moment for mental health treatment around the world, as many Low and Middle Income Countries (LMICs) – representing an increasing majority of the world’s population – are currently developing and scaling up services for the first time. Yet, research on Global Mental Health (GMH) best practices remains scattered and difficult to synthesize. This review aims to simplify existing GMH research on effective biomedical and psychosocial treatment approaches from both high-income countries and LMICs to enable a more comprehensive understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of existing interventions, based on the highest quality, up-to-date research. By understanding which treatments are most effective and why, we can begin to not only implement more effective practices, but guide the future of GMH research in the right directions. The purpose of this review is therefore to understand mental illness, what it is, how it was treated in the past, how it manifests differently around the globe, and how to best treat it. Ultimately, while psychosocial approaches are advised for patients with more mild to moderate disorders, medications and other biomedical approaches are recommended increasingly only for more severe cases. While significant evidence exists to justify the use of psychotropic medications for mental illness, their adverse effects indicate that psychosocial approaches should be prioritized as first line treatments, particularly for mild to moderate disorders. As one of the first to analyze this research, this review is useful not only for GMH scholars, but for practitioners and public health workers globally, as well.


Author(s):  
Debra Kram-Fernandez

This chapter is concerned with the impact of practitioner biases on the experience of a meaningful life for individuals who live with serious mental illness (SMI). Professional biases, systemic biases that originate in societal fear and lack of knowledge, and internalized stigma taken on by the consumer affect life decisions. Following a history of treatment initiatives experienced by consumers as abusive, it is important to understand how a system envisioned to protect and treat was often experienced as harmful. In the 1980s a movement emerged to transform the nature of mental health treatment to a client-centered, recovery-oriented model. In 1999, the Surgeon General proclaimed that all agencies serving this population should be recovery oriented. Yet, the shift to this approach to understanding people with SMI has not been complete. While there are many explanations why practitioners may not fully embrace this perspective, this chapter introduces the concept of “schemas” from cognitive behavioral theory as a way of examining professional biases in the field of SMI.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory G. Grecco ◽  
R. Andrew Chambers

AbstractIn 1939, British psychiatrist Lionel Penrose described an inverse relationship between mental health treatment infrastructure and criminal incarcerations. This relationship, later termed the ‘Penrose Effect’, has proven remarkably predictive of modern trends which have manifested as reciprocal components, referred to as ‘deinstitutionalization’ and ‘mass incarceration’. In this review, we consider how a third dynamic—the criminalization of addiction via the ‘War on Drugs’, although unanticipated by Penrose, has likely amplified the Penrose Effect over the last 30 years, with devastating social, economic, and healthcare consequences. We discuss how synergy been the Penrose Effect and the War on Drugs has been mediated by, and reflects, a fundamental neurobiological connection between the brain diseases of mental illness and addiction. This neuroscience of dual diagnosis, also not anticipated by Penrose, is still not being adequately translated into improving clinical training, practice, or research, to treat patients across the mental illness-addictions comorbidity spectrum. This failure in translation, and the ongoing fragmentation and collapse of behavioral healthcare, has worsened the epidemic of untreated mental illness and addictions, while driving unsustainable government investment into mass incarceration and high-cost medical care that profits too exclusively on injuries and multi-organ diseases resulting from untreated addictions. Reversing the fragmentation and decline of behavioral healthcare with decisive action to co-integrate mental health and addiction training, care, and research—may be key to ending criminalization of mental illness and addiction, and refocusing the healthcare system on keeping the population healthy at the lowest possible cost.


BMJ Open ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (12) ◽  
pp. e024487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taryn Gmitroski ◽  
Christl Bradley ◽  
Lyn Heinemann ◽  
Grace Liu ◽  
Paige Blanchard ◽  
...  

ObjectivesThe issue of gaining employment for those with mental illness is a growing global concern. For many in the young adult population, who are at a transitional age, employment is a central goal. In response, we conducted a scoping review to answer the question, ‘What are the barriers and facilitators to employment for young adults with mental illness?’DesignWe conducted a scoping review in accordance to the Arksey and O’Malley framework. We performed a thorough search of Medline, EMBASE, CINAHL, ABI/INFORM, PsycINFO and Cochrane. We included studies that considered young adults aged 15–29 years of age with a mental health diagnosis, who were seeking employment or were included in an employment intervention.ResultsOur search resulted in 24 research articles that focused on employment for young adults with mental illness. Four main themes were extracted from the literature: (1) integrated health and social services, (2) age-exposure to employment supports, (3) self-awareness and autonomy and (4) sustained support over the career trajectory.ConclusionsOur review suggests that consistent youth-centred employment interventions, in addition to usual mental health treatment, can facilitate young adults with mental illness to achieve their employment goals. Aligning the mental health and employment priorities of young adults may result in improved health and social outcomes for this population while promoting greater engagement of young adults in care.


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