After reading The Impact of Incarceration on Women's Mental Health: Responses from Women in Max Security Prison, by Harner et all and Histories of Childhood Victimization and Subsequent Mental Health Problems, Substance Use, and Sexual Victimization for a Sample of Incarcerated Women in the US Tripodi et all it helped me conceptualize my previous visit to Lee Arrendale State Prison. The Study: The Impact of Incarceration on Women's Mental Health: Responses from Women in Max Security Prison was conducted by having women take a survey and then creating 12 focus groups interviewing women 1.5-2 hours. The study admitted that it was limited by the fact that they could only interview women in ‘incentive units’ and a women’s personal physical health, social support, access to resources, maturity, and life experience also plays its own role, and that the study’s three categories of their mental health improving, worsening, or no change as needed more deph and background information. I think the article, Histories of Childhood Victimization and Subsequent Mental Health Problems, Substance Use, and Sexual Victimization for a Sample of Incarcerated Women in the US Tripodi et all does a nice job of covering individual risk factors of why certain women can fall into those different categories. What especially stood out was the findings of how women’s mental health worsened in prisons due to stress, fear, being away from loved ones, access mental health care, worrying about their physical health, and poor treatment by correctional and health professionals. When visiting the women in Lee Arrendale, they mentioned all of these factors cause women to ‘break’ and ‘loose motivation’. They also discussed how they that felt like they were stuck in a world of psychological warfare. They are not allowed to build meaningful relationships with correctional officers, and are systematically treated as subhuman beings. The article also discusses how encouragement, properly taking medication, access to services, religion, and allowing time to heal personal wounds were common characteristics of women who got better mental health. I find this really ironic since after talking to the women in prison, they explained how women had to do a lot to advocate for themselves, and in an environment of systematic breaking of the psyche women start to feel they do not deserve the mental and physical treatment that they need (Let alone if they can afford their own medication, because in Lee Arrendale they have to pay for their own drugs). We as a class too only have access to the women in ‘incentive units’. It would be extremely beneficial to get perspectives of women outside of those units. During my visit the women explained that there are women in some units that eat concrete and paint and are not given any mental help, and that in every unit women are treated poorly even in their incentive unit where they are ‘model inmates’. I agree with Dr. Harper’s proposal of promoting prison officials to examine gender and trauma, but that it should go further than that: apply rehabilitation. Source:
Harner, Holly M., & Riley Suzanne. The Impact of Incarceration on Women’s Mental Health Responses From Women in a Maximum-Security Prison Qual Health Res January 2013 vol. 23no. 1 26-42. Link: http://qhr.sagepub.com/content/23/1/26.abstract
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