STEPHEN SACCO
Special to The Leader
SUNY Fredonia’s Department of Psychology expanded the scope of America’s prison system. In correlation with the incarcerated and their mentality, the department held a panel discussion and a film screening of The New Asylums documentary on Wednesday, March 7, 2018.
The purpose of this event was to bring awareness and promote students’ ambition towards the use of psychology with the incarcerated. In 2006, the Bureau of Justice reported that 61 percent of inmates in state prisons struggled with mental disorders. It is imagined that the number has only increased.
Dr. Lisa Denton, a psychology professor here at SUNY Fredonia, orchestrated the event with five key players on the panel: Tamie Gates clinical, Dr. Caillean McMahon Tronetti, Dr. Dani McMay, Lynn Graziano-Shaffer and Patrick Johnson.
Everybody on the panel had experience in psychology and working with the incarcerated.
McMay gave an example of bipolar behavior and the difficulties of diagnosis.
“Say you go to the bar, get into a bar fight and get arrested . . . now how do we tell if you were just in a drunken brawl or actually have a mental health issue?”
When it comes to accurately diagnosing and properly treating inmates with mental health problems, America’s county, state and federal governments are faced with a major roadblock: money.
“What happened in our case is we had to hire [a] psychiatrist to diagnosis and give treatment,” said Patrick Johnson, who worked in the Chautauqua County Jail for 31 years. “The problem is the cost of treatment . . . how often can we have a psychiatrist come write a [prescription] and then pay for those meds?”
Johnson added, “Here’s one of the stats out there: 46 percent of people in federal prisons are diagnosed with mental illnesses, 56 percent in state hospitals and 64 percent in county jails.”
Dr. Denton believes that the incarceration system evokes mental health problems.
“The prison system has become the biggest mental health provider in our country . . . I would think the prison environment is stressful for anyone and [would] exacerbate established mental issues,” she said.
Johnson noted that we need to focus more on rehabilitation and less on punishment. But laws and governments take time to change.