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Disciplinary Housing Exacerbates Mental Illness and the Potential for Suicide
A "disproportionate number of prisoners with serious mental illness predictably wind up in punitive segregation." Besides harming them further, it contributes to a greater pandemonium level throughout the prison population because of their screaming and irrational actions like throwing feces at guards.
"Human beings require some degree of social interaction and productive activity to establish and sustain a sense of identity and to maintain a grasp on reality." Absent these, paranoia and an inability to control rage increases.
Segregated inmates do what they can. Some pace relentlessly. Others read and write letters, but many are illiterate. They fare worst in isolation. Anxiety, hallucinations, anger, obsessions, and/or despair result.
In isolation, previously healthy inmates develop psychiatric symptoms, including anxiety; rage; claustrophobia; panic attacks; headaches; lethargy; heart palpitations; violent fantasies; depression; and/or trouble focusing, remembering or sleeping.
Conditions "that cause emotional distress in relatively healthy prisoners cause psychotic breakdowns, severe affective disorders and suicide crises in prisoners who have histories of serious mental illness, as well as in (some) who never suffered a (previous) breakdown...."
Enough stress can break anyone, and "once an individual crosses a line into psychosis or depressive despair, it is very possible that (removing harsh isolation won't be able) to bring him back to a normal mental state."
Staff abuse is also a major problem. Based on widespread inmate reports, they're excessive, including severe beatings, compounded by the stress of overcrowding and inmate-on-inmate violence.
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