Prison mental health care doesn't match NHS

Inpatient care of mentally ill prisoners falls well below that provided by the NHS, an inspection of 13 prisons has shown (p 1031). Prison healthcare centres have around 1700 inpatient beds and 75% of inpatients are mentally ill, often seriously. In their routine inspection of prison health care, Reed and Lyne found that, contrary to guidelines, only a minority of prison nurses had mental health training and no doctor in charge of inpatients had completed specialist psychiatric training. Patients had restricted lives with little therapeutic input. Transfer to the NHS was often slow. The authors propose a greater role for the NHS in the care of prisoners with serious mental illness.


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Relevant Article

Inpatient care of mentally ill people in prison: results of a year's programme of semistructured inspections
John L Reed and Maggi Lyne
BMJ 2000 320: 1031-1034. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

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