title: A national survey of mental health services available to offenders with mental illness: who is doing what?
abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the national practices of psychotherapy services for male offenders with mental illness (OMI) in state correctional facilities. Participants consisted of 230 correctional mental health service providers from 165 state correctional facilities. Results indicated that mental health professionals provided a variety of services to OMI that can be conceptualized by six goals considered important in their work: mental illness recovery, emotions management, institutional functioning, re-entry, risk-need, and personal growth. Mental health professionals in this study generally viewed mental illness recovery, institutional functioning, and personal growth as significantly more important and spent more time focused on these goals than emotions management, re-entry, and risk-need. Mental health professionals tended to believe the services they provided were effective across four key treatment foci including mental illness, skill development, behavioral functioning, and criminogenic needs with more progress perceived in areas related to mental illness and skill development than their ability to effectively change behavioral functioning. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, USA.
authors.forename: Marshall T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Bewley
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Morgan
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D006040:Goals; D019538:Health Care Surveys; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D011330:Prisons; D014481:United States; D000078329:Workforce