title: How people with serious mental illness seek help after leaving jail.
abstract: In this study, I examined how people with serious mental illness defined and prioritized their service needs when released from jail and how these service priorities shaped the sequencing of help-seeking activities after their release. Data included ethnographic observations and interviews with the staff and clients of a mental health reentry program and responses to an open-ended questionnaire that was given to the program's clients (N = 115). Sixty-three percent of the clients identified housing and 35% identified financial assistance as one of their two most important service needs, whereas only 12% selected treatment services. These service priorities reflect a hierarchy in help-seeking activities postrelease in which clients' access to treatment services was predicated on their ability to first find sustainable economic and material support. I conclude that reentry programs need to have the resources required to meet both the basic and treatment needs of people with serious mental illness leaving jail.
authors.affiliation: 1Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, USA.
authors.forename: Amy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Blank Wilson
mesh_terms: D000359:Aftercare; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D014481:United States
keywords: ethnography; health care, access to; health seeking; mental health and illness; prisons, prisoners