May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental health impacts many areas of an individual's life and can often shape their future. Nearly half of inmates being held in jails across the country have been told that they have had a mental disorder, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Lack of resources, care and support often leads to stigmatization and more negative impacts on a person’s life after reentering into society.
Alyssa Sheeran is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
"When you compare prisons to jails, you have a much higher turnover rate," Sheeran told WUWM's Maria Peralta-Arellano. "You also have that coupled with jails that are underfunded and with services or treatment that might not be available. Oftentimes what we find within research is that the majority of individuals who have a mental health condition might not actually be receiving medication or treatment while they're actually being incarcerated."
Here is more of their conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Maria Peralta-Arellano: How does going through the process of being admitted into a jail affect people's mental health?
Alyssa Sheeran: Even a short-term stay can have an impact on somebody, whether you have a mental health condition or not. It can have an impact either in a positive way or a negative way. In a positive sense, an individual has the time to sit there and kind of reflect on what happened, what are the changes that I'm gonna make?
It can also have a negative effect. You can have this sort of diminished sense of self-identity, self-worth, self-esteem, and you can kind of have this self-label put on yourself of sort of a criminal. Once you come out, you can also have that kind of continued on.
When we're talking about mental health and jail, how does that factor into either how people find themselves in the system or prolonged stays?
A lot of what research finds is that there is an association between individuals who have a mental health condition — and particularly an untreated mental health condition — and the likelihood of arrest or incarceration. We tend to see individuals in jails that have major depressive disorder, PTSD, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, personality disorders.
We see that there is this association between individuals who have a mental health condition and their likelihood of being arrested, being incarcerated within jail and then once you're confined, you have this increased risk of prolonged stays because those conditions are likely to just kind of be exasperated.
What would support look like to close some of these gaps, whether it's with re-entry or with recidivism?
I think everyone will always agree that more funding always helps, but I think with that comes, what are you going to do with that?
Providing that support and the services for individuals once they're leaving and being able to have them have treatment, have medication management, be able to have some of those re-entry services that they need where you're stopping that cycle of incarceration.
Also looking at diversion programs, and so diverting individuals who have mental health issues away from the system and into programs that are going to address the underlying issue and try to get them those services.
