Mental disorders in Australian prisoners: a comparison with a community sample

Area of Science:

• Forensic Psychiatry
• Public Health
• Mental Health Research

Background:

• Media and political attention highlights the
• warehousing
• of individuals with mental health problems in prisons.
• Prisoners are often excluded from community health surveys, limiting comparative research.
• No prior studies have directly compared psychiatric morbidity in prisoners versus the general community.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if prisoners exhibit higher rates of psychiatric illness compared to the general population.
• To adjust for demographic variations when comparing mental health prevalence between these groups.

Main Methods:

• Utilized prison reception data (n=916) and the 1997 Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (n=8168).
• Employed the Composite International Diagnostic Interview and screening measures for mental health diagnoses.
• Applied weighting and logistic regression (adjusted for age, sex, education) to compare 12-month prevalence estimates.

Main Results:

• The 12-month prevalence of any psychiatric illness was 80% in prisoners versus 31% in the community.
• Prisoners showed significantly higher psychiatric morbidity, especially for psychosis (OR=11.8), substance use disorders (OR=11.4), and personality disorders (OR=8.6).
• Prisoners reported worse mental functioning and disability scores, but not physical health, compared to the community.

Conclusions:

• Confirmed a substantial overrepresentation of psychiatric morbidity within the prisoner population.
• Emphasized the need for further investigation into the underlying causes of this excess psychiatric illness in incarcerated individuals.