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October 2017: Mental Health
To mark World Mental Health Day, WEPHREN collected resources on mental health in prisons to make them more accessible for people who work with and in prisons. Thank you to all those who have sent in contributions, and special thanks to our guest vlogger, Professor Seena Fazel and our featured blogger, Dr Rohan Borschmann.
Guest video
Professor Seena Fazel, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry & Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in Clinical Science, Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford speaks to us about several projects on mental health in prisons. Professor Fazel highlights the 2016 Lancet Review on mental health in prisoners and reminds us what to bear in mind when we are interpreting and translating the findings of some of these studies to our own contexts. He also speaks of his work on the health of people who have left prison including the link between mental health and the risk of reoffending and introduces a new risk assessment tool - the Risk of Recividism Tool (OxRec).
Featured blog post
Dr Rohan Borschmann brings to our attention his study on self-harm in people released from prison. It is well-established that rates of both suicide and self-harm are elevated in incarcerated populations. Little was known about the epidemiology of self-harm in people released from prison and Dr Borschmann's blog outlines how his study set out to address this notable gap in the literature in Queensland, Australia.
Click here to read the blog post.
Resources
WEPHREN has a collection of mental health resources, articles and papers that can be acccessed here.
Guidance
WEPHREN has a collection of mental health guidance documents that can be accessed here.