Did You Know…

New Study Released on Prevalence of Serious Mental Illness among Jail Inmates

The lead article in the June issue of Psychiatric Services by Henry J. Steadman, PhD and colleagues found that 14.5% of male and 31.0% of female inmates recently admitted to jail have a serious mental illness. The study was conducted by Dr. Steadman, Dr. Fred Osher, Pamela Clark Robbins, Brian Case, and Dr. Steven Samuels. All authors are affiliated with Policy Research Associates, Inc., except for Dr. Osher of the Council of State Governments Justice Center. The study was partially funded by the Justice Center.

The authors analyzed data collected from two time periods at multiple jails to calculate the prevalence of mental illness. Selection of inmates for clinical interviews was based on systematic sampling of data from a brief screen for symptoms of mental illness that was administered at admission for all inmates as part of earlier research by the authors. The screen was administered to 11,168 inmates during the first phase of data collection and 10,240 inmates during the second phase. A diagnostic interview protocol was administered to a total sample of 822 inmates and weighting procedures were applied to generate the prevalence estimates.

These findings confirm what jail administrators already know – a substantial proportion of inmates entering jails have a serious mental illness and women have rates twice that of men.

• The article is available from Council of State Governments Justice Center: http://consensusproject.org/downloads/PsySJailMHStudy.pdf

• View the services available from Policy Research Associates to improve your community’s response to justice-involved people with serious mental illness: http://www.prainc.com

• View the brief prepared by the Council of State Governments Justice Center: http://consensusproject.org/updates/features/prevannouncement

What’s Happening in Your Community

In 2008, SAMHSA awarded six Jail Diversion and Trauma Recovery Program grants to support local implementation and statewide expansion of trauma-informed jail diversion programs for people with post traumatic stress (PTSD) and other service-related disorders. These grants went to the Colorado Mental Health Division in Denver; the Connecticut State Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services in Hartford; the Georgia State Department of Human Resources in Atlanta; the Illinois State Department of Human Services in Chicago; the Massachusetts State Department of Mental Health in Boston; and the Vermont State Department of Health in Burlington. All of these grantees have prioritized their programs to meet the needs of veterans and are working closely with the Veteran Administration to keep service members out of the criminal justice system. For more information about what’s happening in these communities and how the GAINS Center is helping these jail diversion grantees, visit GAINS Center-2008 Jail Diversion Grantees.

The CMHS National GAINS Center would like to know more about what is happing in your community. To share information about new programs or to highlight a innovative program in your area, send information to the GAINS Center at http://gainscenter.samhsa.gov.

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More Resources from GAINS

Responding to the Needs of Justice-Involved Combat Veterans with
Service-Related Trauma and Mental Health Conditions

Although veterans are not overrepresented in the justice system as compared to their proportion in the United States general adult population, on any given day veterans account for nine of every hundred individuals in U.S. jails and prisons (Noonan & Mumola, 2007; Greenberg & Rosenheck, 2008). The unmet mental health service needs of justice-involved veterans are of growing concern as more veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) return home with combat stress exposure resulting in high rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. Responding to the Needs of Justice-Involved Combat Veterans with Service-Related Trauma and Mental Health Conditions provides a series of recommendations and background to inform community-based responses to justice-involved combat veterans with mental health conditions. Both for public health and public safety reasons, mental health and criminal justice agencies must take steps to identify such veterans and connect them to comprehensive and appropriate services when they come in contact with the criminal justice system. To read more about this report visit GAINS/Veterans.

What’s Upcoming

Conferences

7/29- 30 – National Alliance on Ending Homelessness – Annual Conference,
Washington, DC more...

8/24-26 – American Jail Association – Dealing with the Mentally Ill Offender, Arlington, VA more...

8/26- 28 – National Association of Peer Specialists – Annual Conference, Phoenix, AZ more..

Webinars/Teleconferences

7/15 – National Institute of Corrections Webinar on the Mentally Ill in Jail more...