Odisha engages experts to assess mental health of jail inmates

BHUBANESWAR: The state prisons directorate has appointed 33 experts to address issues concerning the mental health of inmates in jails.
“We have completed the walk-in interview and altogether, 16 clinical psychologists and 17 psychiatric social workers have been recruited,” director general (prisons) Manoj Chhabra said.
Until now, the directorate had to depend on chief district medical officers to get psychiatrists from nearby hospitals for sporadic visits to jails to assess the mental condition of the prisoners. Wary of a shortage of psychiatrists in the hospitals and their irregular visits to jails, the prisons directorate last month decided to recruit mental health experts on a contractual basis exclusively for jails.
“The post of a psychiatric social worker is a level below of the psychiatrist. The psychiatric social workers are qualified, capable and competent of evaluating the mental condition of the inmates,” Chhabra added.
According to the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 699 prisoners were found to be suffering from mental health issues in different jails in 2021, which is second only to Uttar Pradesh which had 1,792 mentally ill inmates that year. In 2019 and 2020, at least 626 and 696 prisoners, respectively, were diagnosed with psychiatric ailments in Odisha, NCRB data stated.
“There may be even more prisoners whose mental illnesses may still be undetected and their screening needs to be done at the earliest,” another jail official said.
Sources said bulk of the inmates — both under-trial prisoners and convicts — started showing symptoms of mental illnesses after spending several years in jails. Most of the inmates were first time offenders.
“The trauma and shock of staying in jail, detachment from families and misconduct of notorious criminals in jails often pushes many inmates (who are not habitual offenders) into depression,” psychologist Soumyakanta Swain said.
At least 16 inmates allegedly died by suicide inside different jails in the state between 2019 and 2021, the NCRB report stated.