A brief history of the criminalization of mental illness

The Judiciarization of People Living with Mental Illness: A Grounded Theory on the Perceptions of Persons Involuntary Admitted in Psychiatric Institution

The involvement of people living with mental illness in the judicial process, whether in civil or criminal justice system, is a growing phenomenon that can be defined as judiciarization. Such over-representation of people with mental illness in the justice system is related to several issues, including stigma, experienced coercion, loss of autonomy and social isolation. To explore this understudied phenomenon in nursing research, we conducted a study to better understand how judiciarization affects people living with mental illness. The specific objectives were: 1) to understand how insertion into a judicial process affects people living with mental illness; 2) to explore the perception of these people and their lived experience within the judicial trajectory. For the methodology, grounded theory was used as a research model. The theoretical framework of the total institution, proposed by Erwin Goffman, was used conceptually. Participants were recruited from a university-affiliated hospital. Hospitalized persons who had been involved in the justice system were interviewed (n = 10). Three conceptualizing categories were identified through the analyzed data: 1) Diversity of Judicial Trajectories; 2) Involuntary Psychiatric Admission Process; 3) Judiciarization Lived as a Complex Experience. The results of this research can be used to better inform nurses, clinicians, and policy makers about the impacts of the judiciarization of mental illness, and how clinical practices can be better adapted to populations with very complex health needs.

Association of a History of Incarceration and Solitary Confinement with Suicide-Related Outcomes in a General Population Sample from Two U.S. Cities

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate whether a history of incarceration was associated with increased odds of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, and to determine if this association was further strengthened when combined with a history of solitary confinement.

METHODS

We collected cross-sectional data from a general population sample in New York City and Baltimore in March 2017. Participants were categorized based on their history of incarceration and solitary confinement: (1) no incarceration, (2) incarceration-only, and (3) incarceration plus solitary confinement. We compared these three groups, utilizing hierarchical adjustments for sociodemographic factors and adverse childhood experiences. Missing data were accounted for utilizing multiple imputation via chained equation.

RESULTS

A total of 1221 individuals were analyzed. Those who experienced both incarceration and solitary confinement consistently had higher odds of suicidal ideation (OR, 2.80; 95% CI, 1.43 to 5.48) and suicide attempts (OR, 6.98; 95% CI, 2.77 to 17.61) than never incarcerated individuals. Those who experienced incarceration without solitary confinement had higher odds of suicide attempts (OR, 3.77; 95% CI, 1.35 to 10.56) than never incarcerated individuals, whereas this association was not evident for suicidal ideation. Solitary confinement increased the odds of suicidal ideation even compared to incarceration without solitary confinement (OR, 2.71; 95% CI, 1.09 to 6.74).

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings support the need to address the higher likelihood of suicide-related outcomes among those in contact with the criminal justice system, and to consider alternatives to solitary confinement.

"Good luck, social distance": rapid decarceration and community care for serious mental illness and substance use disorder during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic inspired calls for rapid decarceration of prisons and jails to slow the spread of disease in a high-risk congregate setting. Due to the rarity of intentionally-decarcerative policies, little is known about the effects of rapid decarceration on individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) substance use disorder (SUD), a population who receive many services via the criminal legal system (CLS). We conducted interviews with 13 key informants involved in CLS in San Francisco, CA to better understand the implication of the decarcerative policies put into practice in early 2020. Participants described a tension between the desire to have fewer people incarcerated and the challenges of accessing services and support - especially during the lockdown period of the pandemic - outside of the CLS given the number of services that are only accessible to those who have been arrested, incarcerated, or sentenced. These findings emphasize the need for investing in community social services rather than further expanding the CLS to achieve the goal of supporting individuals with SMI and SUD shrinking the US system of mass incarceration.

Evaluations of competence to stand trial are evolving amid a national "competency crisis"

Across the United States, court orders for competence to stand trial (CST) evaluations and competence restoration services have been increasing much more rapidly than states can provide these services, prompting what has been called a national "competency crisis." The challenge in providing timely competence restoration services has, in several jurisdictions, prompted a change in competence evaluations. Evaluators are more often required to address broader clinical issues-such as recommending placement or addressing the urgency of hospitalization-rather than addressing only CST. This marks an evolving practice in forensic evaluation, which moves evaluators beyond the very narrow forensic question of competence and into more traditionally clinical recommendations. We describe several state examples of changing practice in order to highlight the initial barriers, and potential benefits, to addressing additional clinical issues in competence evaluations, amid a national competence crisis.

[Prevalence of adverse and victimization experiences in adult people with severe mental illness in Barcelona]

OBJECTIVE

To describe the extension of the adverse experiences, including victimization, lived in childhood and adulthood in a sample of people with severe mental illness residing in Barcelona, Spain.

METHOD

Descriptive, quantitative and cross-sectional study. Adverse and victimization experiences were assessed using 26 items from the Adverse Childhood Experiences Questionnaire (ACE-IQ). Items were included obtain information regarding victimization during adulthood. Seventy-four people with severe mental illness were interviewed (median age: 42.03 years; standard deviation: 9.60).

RESULTS

All participants reported at least two victimization experiences throughout their lifetime. The most frequent experiences were conventional crimes (87.8%) and victimization by caregivers (86.5%). Before age 18, half of the participants reported having experienced physical violence by their caregivers (52.7%) and almost one out of three reported to have been victim of sexual abuse (32.4%). Women were almost 13 times more likely to experience sexual victimization than men throughout their lifetime (odds ratio: 12.75; 95% confidence interval: 4.19-38.71).

CONCLUSIONS

Victimization experienced by people with severe mental illness is a widespread problem that has received little attention. The results of this study are consistent with those obtained in previous investigations and underscore the need to translate this knowledge into medical practice into medical practice, considering them in order to develop treatments with a comprehensive approach to mental health.

Perception of the criminality of attempted suicide in Nepal and its impact on suicide reporting

In 2018-2019, according to the official statistics, 5754 people died as a result of suicide in Nepal. This is a high number for a country with a population of 29 million people. Experts believe that the actual rate is considerably higher and that many suicides are not reported. This underreporting of suicide is frequently blamed on the stigma and the criminality of attempted suicide. Yet, there has never been a criminal liability for attempted suicide in Nepal. This article discusses the reasons for the perception of the criminality of attempted suicide in the country, its consequences, and the ways of addressing them. We found that the involvement of the police at the initial stages of suicide investigation confirms public perceptions that attempted suicide is a punishable offense and this may reinforce the stigma of suicide. Recent criminalization of the abetment of suicide has contributed to this perception as the public may not be clear about the distinction between abetment of suicide and attempted suicide. Criminalization of suicide not in the laws but in minds discourages reporting and help-seeking behaviour and victimizes people who need support and services. We argue that decriminalization is more than removing the outdated legal clauses from the legal statutes, but also public awareness raising about the reasons for police investigation of suspicious deaths, sensitivity training, and education of government officials, policymakers, and police about suicide and its prevention. These are needed to dispel the myth of criminalization of attempted suicide in Nepal. Our findings could be of wider interest to scholars working on reducing the stigma of suicide and decriminalization of suicide attempts.

Association between incarceration and psychotic experiences in a general population sample

Incarceration of individuals with mental disorders is an important public health topic. While incarceration appears to be associated with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders, to the best of our knowledge, no study has examined the association between incarceration and psychotic experiences (PEs). The present study aimed to examine whether individuals with PEs had higher odds of incarceration among a general population sample using data from Baltimore and New York City (N = 974). We fitted three regression models to examine the association between incarceration and PEs, using hierarchical adjustments for sociodemographic factors, adverse childhood experiences, and neighborhood disruption. The odds ratio (OR) for incarceration was attenuated with inclusion of more covariates in the model but remained statistically significant even at the highest level of adjustment (OR = 2.12, 95% CI = 1.30 to 3.46). Findings were similar when individually examining delusional mood, delusions of reference and persecution, and hallucination. For delusions of control, a significant association was not found in the highest level of adjustment. The present study provides novel information on the association between incarceration and PEs, adjusted for sociodemographic and psychosocial confounders. Taken in the context of prior studies, these data further support the need to address the high prevalence of psychosis across all aspects of the criminal justice system. Future studies should employ longitudinal data and objective outcome measurements.

Gilles Deleuze's societies of control: Implications for mental health nursing and coercive community care

Since the era of deinstitutionalisation, many clinical approaches have emerged to enable the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness. In recent years, the use of coercive approaches in the community (e.g., outpatient commitment or community treatment orders) has also increased internationally. Although nurses' role regarding these coercive approaches is central and significant, few empirical and theoretical writings have tackled this controversial nursing practice. The purpose of this paper is to analyse coercive nursing care through the lens of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze's concept of 'societies of control'. Taking up Michel Foucault's work on disciplinary power, Deleuze explores how the move from the striated spaces of closed institutions to the smooth spaces of societies of control took place since the middle of the 20th century. According to Deleuze, the overall objective of 'societies of control' is no longer simply to govern deviant behaviour in closed environments (e.g., psychiatric hospitals and prisons) but to ensure a regime of unrelentless surveillance in the open spaces of our communities.