Arabic version: أطباء نفسيون يدعون إلى إصلاح شامل للصحة النفسية في السجون

According to ABC News, Australia’s peak body for psychiatrists has backed calls for major changes to mental health care in New South Wales prisons, including ending the isolation of suicidal prisoners in so-called safe cells. The Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists’ NSW branch said the approach should be led by health care rather than custody.

Dr Ian Korbel, the branch chair, said safe cells were “a custodial response rather than a health response”. He said people at risk of suicide needed close support from nursing staff, psychologists and psychiatrists, and might need medication. He also said they would often need support in a cell with other people rather than being alone.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr Kerri Eagle has called for Justice Health, an arm of the NSW health department, to lead management of mentally ill prisoners. At present, at-risk inmates are assessed by two Corrective Services NSW staff and one Justice Health worker, while guards monitor inmates sent to safe cells. Dr Korbel agreed that health workers, rather than correctional officers, should assess and monitor prisoners with serious mental illness.

The calls follow an ABC examination of 48 NSW coronial inquests since 2015 that identified failures in the care or supervision of people with mental illness. Fourteen of those cases concerned the death of an Indigenous person. They include interim findings in the case of Tammy Shipley, a 47-year-old Aboriginal woman with schizophrenia who died from water intoxication after 10 nights in a monitored safe cell. The RANZCP also wants greater diversion of people with severe mental illness from the justice system into treatment, citing a 2019 UNSW study that found NSW prisoners with psychosis who received a court treatment order were less likely to reoffend.