Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders
Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2016-09-03

Total Pages: 171

ISBN-13: 0309439124

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Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

Health and Incarceration
Health and Incarceration

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2013-08-08

Total Pages: 67

ISBN-13: 0309287715

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Over the past four decades, the rate of incarceration in the United States has skyrocketed to unprecedented heights, both historically and in comparison to that of other developed nations. At far higher rates than the general population, those in or entering U.S. jails and prisons are prone to many health problems. This is a problem not just for them, but also for the communities from which they come and to which, in nearly all cases, they will return. Health and Incarceration is the summary of a workshop jointly sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) Committee on Law and Justice and the Institute of Medicine(IOM) Board on Health and Select Populations in December 2012. Academics, practitioners, state officials, and nongovernmental organization representatives from the fields of healthcare, prisoner advocacy, and corrections reviewed what is known about these health issues and what appear to be the best opportunities to improve healthcare for those who are now or will be incarcerated. The workshop was designed as a roundtable with brief presentations from 16 experts and time for group discussion. Health and Incarceration reviews what is known about the health of incarcerated individuals, the healthcare they receive, and effects of incarceration on public health. This report identifies opportunities to improve healthcare for these populations and provides a platform for visions of how the world of incarceration health can be a better place.

Communities in Action
Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

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In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

A Mental Health Treatment Program for Inmates in Restrictive Housing
A Mental Health Treatment Program for Inmates in Restrictive Housing

Author: Ashley B. Batastini

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-06-26

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1351720279

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This treatment program targets the criminal, behavioral, and mental health problems of inmates in segregated housing that prevents them from living prosocially and productively within the general prison population. The program makes use of a bi-adaptive psychoeducational and cognitive-behavioral treatment model to increase inmates’ understanding about the psychological and criminal antecedents that contributed to their current placement, and to teach them the skills necessary for managing these problem areas. This flexible intervention assists inmates with significant problem behaviors by reducing psychological impairment and improving their ability to cope with prison life. This book includes a program introduction and guide for clinicians, the inmate workbook, and accompanying eResources to assist clinicians in both successful program implementation and evaluation of treatment outcomes. Designed to account for the safety and physical limitations that make the delivery of needed mental and behavioral health services difficult, this guide is essential reading for practitioners working with high-needs, high-risk inmate populations.

Racism and Psychiatry
Racism and Psychiatry

Author: Morgan M. Medlock

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-10-04

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 3319901974

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This book addresses the unique sociocultural and historical systems of oppression that have alienated African-American and other racial minority patients within the mental healthcare system. This text aims to build a novel didactic curriculum addressing racism, justice, and community mental health as these issues intersect clinical practice. Unlike any other resource, this guide moves beyond an exploration of the problem of racism and its detrimental effects, to a practical, solution-oriented discussion of how to understand and approach the mental health consequences with a lens and sensitivity for contemporary justice issues. After establishing the historical context of racism within organized medicine and psychiatry, the text boldly examines contemporary issues, including clinical biases in diagnosis and treatment, addiction and incarceration, and perspectives on providing psychotherapy to racial minorities. The text concludes with chapters covering training and medical education within this sphere, approaches to supporting patients coping with racism and discrimination, and strategies for changing institutional practices in mental healthcare. Written by thought leaders in the field, Racism and Psychiatry is the only current tool for psychiatrists, psychologists, administrators, educators, medical students, social workers, and all clinicians working to treat patients dealing with issues of racism at the point of mental healthcare.

Hell Is a Very Small Place
Hell Is a Very Small Place

Author: Jean Casella

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2014-11-11

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1620971380

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“An unforgettable look at the peculiar horrors and humiliations involved in solitary confinement” from the prisoners who have survived it (New York Review of Books). On any given day, the United States holds more than eighty-thousand people in solitary confinement, a punishment that—beyond fifteen days—has been denounced as a form of cruel and degrading treatment by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Now, in a book that will add a startling new dimension to the debates around human rights and prison reform, former and current prisoners describe the devastating effects of isolation on their minds and bodies, the solidarity expressed between individuals who live side by side for years without ever meeting one another face to face, the ever-present specters of madness and suicide, and the struggle to maintain hope and humanity. As Chelsea Manning wrote from her own solitary confinement cell, “The personal accounts by prisoners are some of the most disturbing that I have ever read.” These firsthand accounts are supplemented by the writing of noted experts, exploring the psychological, legal, ethical, and political dimensions of solitary confinement. “Do we really think it makes sense to lock so many people alone in tiny cells for twenty-three hours a day, for months, sometimes for years at a time? That is not going to make us safer. That’s not going to make us stronger.” —President Barack Obama “Elegant but harrowing.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A potent cry of anguish from men and women buried way down in the hole.” —Kirkus Reviews

Ill-equipped
Ill-equipped

Author: Sasha Abramsky

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13:

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Recommendations -- Background -- Who are the mentally ill in prison? -- Mental illness and women prisoners -- Systems in transition -- Difficulties mentally ill prisoners face coping in prison -- Inadequate responses and abuses by correctional staff -- Inadequate mental health treatment in prisons -- Insufficient provision of specialized facilities for seriously ill prisoners -- Case study: Alabama, a system in crisis -- Mentally ill prisoners and segregation -- Suicide and self-mutilation -- Failure to provide discharge services -- Legal standards.

Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border
Wall Disease: The Psychological Toll of Living Up Against a Border

Author: Jessica Wapner

Publisher: The Experiment, LLC

Published: 2020-10-06

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1615197354

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We build border walls to keep danger out. But do we understand the danger posed by walls themselves? East Germans were the first to give the crisis a name: Mauerkrankheit, or “wall disease.” The afflicted—everyday citizens living on both sides of the Berlin wall—displayed some combination of depression, anxiety, excitability, suicidal ideation, and paranoia. The Berlin Wall is no more, but today there are at least seventy policed borders like it. What are they doing to our minds? Jessica Wapner investigates, following a trail of psychological harm around the world. In Brownsville, Texas, the hotly contested US-Mexico border wall instills more feelings of fear than of safety. And in eastern Europe, a Georgian grandfather pines for his homeland—cut off from his daughters, his baker, and his bank by the arbitrary path of a razor-wire fence built in 2013. Even in borderlands riven by conflict, the same walls that once offered relief become enduring reminders of trauma and helplessness. Our brains, Wapner writes, devote “border cells” to where we can and cannot go safely—so, a wall that goes up in our town also goes up in our minds. Weaving together interviews with those living up against walls and expert testimonies from geographers, scientists, psychologists, and other specialists, she explores the growing epidemic of wall disease—and illuminates how neither those “outside” nor “inside” are immune.