Towards mental health promotion in prisons: the role of screening for emotional distress

Abstract

Prisoners who are at risk of mental illness and self-harm or suicide can be easily missed by existing prison screening procedures. More proactive measures are needed. One possible way is to 'screen' prisoners in the first week in custody. Self-report measures offer a better alternative to lengthy clinical interviews given the large number of prisoners. With a sample of 400 newly incarcerated male prisoners, this study aimed at establishing the construct validity, internal consistency and clinical utility of the GHQ-12 through a psychological screening programme. One factor with an eigen value of 5.94 explained almost 50% of the variance in the items on the GHQ-12. This questionnaire was also internally consistent. Using the same questionnaire, 59% of prisoners were emotionally distressed using the recommended cut-off-point for the prison population (score >= 5). These prisoners were referred to a variety of services including both voluntary and non-voluntary services and for 14% of those prisoners an ACCT plan was initiated. The prisoners appeared to welcome a programme of psychological screening. This screening may complement existing screening and suicide prevention procedures at the point of arrival to prison. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for future research and the study's limitations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.