Nearly half of inmates are on psych meds in some county prisons: What's... http://blog.pennlive.com/midstate_impact/print.html?entry=/2015/07/men...
Nearly half of inmates are on psych meds in some county prisons: What's the rate in yours? Daniel Simmons-Ritchie | [email protected] By Daniel Simmons-Ritchie | simmons- [email protected] Email the author | Follow on Twitter on July 23, 2015 at 8:30 AM, updated July 23, 2015 at 8:20 PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: In 2006, with some controversy, the state shuttered central Pennsylvania's only mental hospital. The closure of the Harrisburg State Hospital came with a promise from state officials to the counties it served: mentally ill people wouldn't end up on city streets. Instead, savings from the closure would be reinvested in caseworkers and other programs to help the region's mentally ill live in the community. Today continues a multi-part package that will publish over the next couple of months looking at people with mental illnesses and the overworked and underfunded system that's now in place to serve them.
When David Zug started work as a psychologist in the Dauphin County Prison in 1981 he began with a simple mission: provide therapy for a small handful of mentally ill inmates.
In that year, he remembers, about seven inmates were prescribed psychotropic medications.
Last year, on an average day in the Dauphin County Prison, there were 325 – nearly a third of the facility's average daily population.
That dramatic rise in the rate of prescription of psychotropic medication in the prison has been mirrored in correctional facilities across Pennsylvania. In some county prisons, according to PennLive's analysis, roughly half of their average daily population was prescribed psychotropic medication in recent years.
Zug and other mental health workers say those increases are partly due to better diagnosis and treatment but, just as significantly, they also represent a rising tide of mentally ill people entering the criminal justice system. A trend driven, many correctional officials and policy experts believe, by the long-term closure of state hospitals in Pennsylvania and insufficient mental health services in the community.
In the interactive graphic below, readers can explore the rate that psychotropic medications were prescribed in 2014 for county prisons that PennLive was able to obtain data for. Where data is available, readers can also explore how those rates have changed in recent years.
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2006
na* 9-16% 17-24% 25-33% 34-41% 42-50% State-wide prison medication rates:
26.49 24.49 24.73 24.99 26.82 21.06 20.01 22.32 22.37
Graphic by Nick Malawskey. Sources: PrimeCare Medical, Corizon Correctional Health Care, MHM Services .
Overall, PennLive's analysis of 31 county prisons in the state, with a total average daily population of 27,565 inmates, shows that nearly a third of them – 27.1 percent – were prescribed psychotropic medication on an average day last year. In addition:
Among the prisons that PennLive has data for, the total rate of inmates on prescription medication has grown from 21 percent in 2006 to 27 percent in 2014. Dauphin County Prison had one of the sharpest increases in prescription rates over the past nine years among the counties analyzed. Some observers tie that increase to the 2006 closure of Harrisburg State Hospital. In several small, rural facilities, prescription rates among inmate have been particularly high in recent years. In Jefferson County Prison, 49 percent of the facility's average daily population of 135 inmates were prescribed psychotropic medications last year. In Crawford County Prison in 2013, the rate was 55 percent among its average daily population of 199 inmates.
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