Focussed visit summary: Visits to people with mental disorders in prison
Number of visits 4
Number of recommendations 8
(We undertook themed visits to prisons this year. The findings and recommendations from these will be published separately)
Recurring themes and areas for improvement
1.Access to advocacy
Any person with a mental disorder has the right of access to independent advocacy. NHS Boards and local authorities must secure the provision of advocacy services (Mental Health (Care and Treatment) (Scotland) Act 2003). We found that prisoners with mental disorders did not have ready access to advocacy. We made recommendations about this in three of the four prisons we visited. This also features in the national recommendations we are making in our themed report. We have not seen much progress so far despite our recommendations.
Example of improvements following our visit:
Our recommendation where we found that prisoners did not have sufficient access to advocacy
Prisoners with mental disorder should have access to independent advocacy. We were told during the visit that advocacy services are available to prisoners, but only in crisis as a one off intervention.
The prison's response:
Contact has been made with a local agency who will provide urgent advocacy. National Advocacy Providers have been invited to forensic network meeting to discuss how this can be moved forward.
2.Access to a range of mental health services
Psychological approaches to mental health problems may be helpful for some prisoners. We found that these were not always available. We made recommendations about increasing the availability of psychology and others with specialist therapeutic skills
Example of improvements following our visit:
Our recommendation where we found a lack of availability of talking therapies:
Prisoners should have access to talking therapies within the prison. Clinical psychology input focuses almost exclusively on undertaking risk assessments. No cognitive behaviour therapy has been available for some time to prisoners, because of the lack of trained nursing staff.
The prison's response:
Prisoners with mental health problems are advised by the mental health team that they can access their service. Prisoners have access to less formal talking therapies - 1:1 nursing intervention, breathing space, living life to the full, etc. There is a clear intention to increase the amount of staff trained in psychological interventions, in the draft mental health plan. We have now doubled the number of mental health nurses.
