- Inadequate treatment of mentally ill prisoners is a problem across the U.S. When psychiatric institutions began closing down in the 1950s, they weren't replaced with mental health services in the community. So, many people with mental illness have scrapes with the law, and end up in prisons that are ill-equipped to treat them.
According to federal data on state and federal prisons from 2011 to 2012, nearly 40 percent of inmates reported having been told by a mental health professional that they had a mental health disorder.
Yet among those who met the threshold for having serious psychological distress at the time of the survey, only about half were receiving treatment — medication, counseling, or both — for their illness. And they were more likely to be written up or charged with verbal or physical assault against correctional staff or other inmates than prisoners without an indicator of a mental health problem.
Correctional facilities in the U.S. are considered the largest provider of mental health services. Yet many prison systems are facing fiscal crises and struggle to provide constitutionally adequate treatment, even after lawsuits lead to court mandates for access to mental health care.