Solitary confinement has drastic effects on the mental health of inmates with mental illness. Few social scientists question that isolation can have harmful effects. Research over the last half-century has demonstrated that it can worsen mental illness and produce symptoms even in prisoners who start out psychologically robust. The universal consensus among mental health experts is that correctional departments must never send people with serious mental illnesses to solitary confinement, because complete isolation causes people with serious mental illness to fall apart. Nearly every scientific inquiry into the effects of solitary confinement over the past 150 years has concluded that subjecting an individual to more than 10 days of involuntary segregation results in a distinct set of emotional, cognitive, social, and physical pathologies.
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Condemning Mentally IllThe Texas Department of Criminal Justice confines at least 2,012 people with mental illnesses in solitary confinement
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Exacerbating The ProblemAccording research compiled by the American Psychiatric Association, clinicians generally agree that placement of inmates with serious mental illnesses in settings with ̳extreme isolation‘ is contraindicated because many of the- se inmates‘ psychiatric conditions will clinically deteriorate or not improve. An estimated 20% of all inmates in the nation‘s prison and jails are seriously mentally ill.
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Hurting ThemselvesA 2007 study examining attempted suicide in the prison system identified solitary confinement as a major factor in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. A national study of 401 jail suicides in 1986 found that two out of three were among those held in an Isolation unit.
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