Mental Healthcare through Cognitive Emotional Regulation Strategies among Prisoners

Prisoners are exposed to a deprived environment, which triggers mental illness and psychological problems. Abundant research has reported that mental illness problems, suicide, aggression, and violent behaviors occur in incarcerated people. Although the mental healthcare system for incarcerated people is emphasized, little research has been conducted due to their limited environment. In particular, the regulation of negative emotion is significantly associated with mental illness and anti-social and violent behaviors. However, mental healthcare through cognitive emotional regulation based on cognitive behavioral therapy has not been fully investigated. This study identified four different patterns in cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotions. Cognitive emotional regulation strategies (i.e., self-blame, other-blame, rumination, catastrophizing, putting into perspective, positive refocusing, positive reappraisal, acceptance, and refocus on planning) were examined and addressed their vulnerable psychological factors. We analyzed a total of 500 prisoners' responses to the cognitive emotional regulation questionnaire (CERQ) by latent class profiling analysis. A four-class model was identified based on the responses of CERQ. In addition, the significant effect of depression on classifying the four classes was found. Furthermore, differences in the average number of incarcerations were also shown across four classes. In conclusion, Class 2 (Negative Self-Blamer) uses dysfunctional/negative strategies that may place the group at a high risk of psychological disorder symptoms, including depression and post-traumatic stress. Class 3 (Distorted Positivity) uses positive/functional strategies but seems to utilize the positive strategies in distorted manners to rationalize their convictions. Class 1 (Strong Blamer) and Class 4 (Moderator Blamer) showed similar patterns focused on the "other-blame" strategy for regulating negative emotion, but they are at different levels, indicating that they attribute incarceration to external factors. These findings provide useful information for designing mental healthcare interventions for incarcerated people and psychological therapy programs for clinical and correctional psychologists in forensic settings.