Discuss the history of the mentally ill in prisons. How are they dealt with today?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The number of mentally ill inmates has grown in America’s prisons. As jails became dumping grounds for the mentally ill after mental health hospitals closed in the 1970s, some of these inmates with chronic mental illnesses have found themselves in a prison environment.
The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill in the United States came about as a result of the civil rights movement and the related effort to increase the rights of powerless people. Too many people were civilly committed to mental health institutions for years without any legal recourse or protection, it was thought. In addition, the pharmaceutical company Smith, Kline, & French (now GlaxoSmithKline) pushed its drug, Thorazine, as a potential “cure” for mental illness with state legislators who were eager to save money by closing mental health institutions. As legal restrictions on civil commitment of the mentally ill spread across the country, and as state legislators believed the claims (which turned out to be unfounded) of the pharmaceutical company, states, and counties closed their mental health hospitals or reduced their capacities significantly. Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act in 1963, which ended much of the federal support for mental health hospitals. Instead, Congress was to fund less restrictive institutional alternatives such as halfway houses, and outpatient facilities were either underfunded or shunted by community members who did not want such facilities in their neighborhoods. Thus, an unintended consequence of this deinstitutionalization movement was that there were few public services available in communities to assist the mentally ill and their families. Jails, and then prisons, became the de facto mental health patient dumping ground.
Unfortunately, and as with those who have major medical problems, most prisons and jails are ill-equipped and -staffed to handle mentally ill inmates. There are difficulties in diagnosis, management of people who do not understand how to behave in a prison, programming and developing appropriate prison employment, and in devising a reentry plan. Any treatment programming available has long waiting lists. Sometimes staff need to be concerned that the mentally ill inmates require protection from predation, and to protect other inmates, they will need to keep an eye on the violent outbursts of mentally ill patients as they might injure others. Some studies link PTSD with an assault history, propensity for revictimization, violent behavior, substance abuse, and mental illness, so it is no surprise that there needs to be trauma-related treatments available for the mentally ill in prisons as well.