Mental and Physical Illness of Prisoners

Physical Illness

The prisoners who get released from the jail need extra care and attention. They tend to have more infectious diseases rather than the general public. NCCHC found in 2002 that most common problems arising for a person discharged from prison are chronic diseases like HIV and Hepatitis C. The rate of such contagious disease is much higher in prisoners than an average citizen. Prisoners when get discharged, suffer from many problems when they go back to the society. According to a research by Binswanger, if such persons are not given continuum car, they have 12 times higher chances of death from health problems. The main causes are drug overdose and cardio diseases.  The release of such prisoners also affects the citizens who bear hospitalization expense of the patients as these prisoners mostly lacked health insurance. Individuals, who do not have severe diseases that can lead to the death of a person, receive only minimal guidance regarding the health care services. In the absence of detailed knowledge of healthcare requirements, they find it hard to adhere to the treatments and medical services. This hinders their struggle towards reentering the society. Therefore, a formal discharge plan needs to be formulated connecting the medical services and the prisoner.

Mental Illness

A recent study conducted in 2006 by James and Glaze suggests that mental illness among prisoners in U.S. state and federal system is common. 43% prisoners suffer from major depression as compared to 8% illness in the general public. The need to properly handle this issue increases as such patients rarely have any support from family.

Barriers

When a prisoner is discharged, he faces prohibitive barriers. Many people come from a segment of the population with lack of financial and social resources. Ex-offenders suffer from the problem of finding a secure job. They are not accepted by family and community. On top of that, there are many institutional barriers imposed on them. Due to the addictive nature, they find it hard to cope up with substance abuse. Given a set of barriers, the individual and society have to pay an enormous cost to reintegrate these ex-prisoners in the society. Keeping in context the social, economic and financial factors, primary care providers, policymakers, criminal justice agencies and community-based organizations play an important role to prepare the prisoners for discharge planning. Discharge planning can act as a bridge between the prisoner and community, helping establish contacts and promoting information sharing.