BHUBANESWAR: To address mental health issues of prisoners in the state, the staff posted in jails of Odisha have undergone specialised training on early screening of symptoms and immediate intervention.
The Odisha Digital Academy for Mental Health (ODAMH) under the mental health institute of SCB medical college and hospital, Cuttack, designed the six-month online course that was launched on March 23.
According to Seema Parija, an assistant professor in psychiatry and in-charge officer of ODAMH, the training session has enabled the participants to take up screening of inmates suffering from mental illness. Parija said early detection of symptoms related to mental illness and strategic interventions can help inmates overcome the problem.
"Our course laid stress on screening of various signs and symptoms of mental illness like psychosis (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder), anxiety, somatoform disorders, depression, substance use, suicide and the requisite management (pharmacological and psychosocial) in the prison setting,” said ODAMH’s course coordinator Sushree Sangita Behura.
Sukanya Mahakul, a clinical psychologist and trainer, said jail personnel, medical officers and pharmacists were earlier unaware of conducting early screening of symptoms of mental illness among inmates.
Sushupti Mahapatra, another clinical psychologist, said the training programme helped the jail staff to screen various mental disorders, identify the factors influencing it and plan for evidence-based treatment and referral.
Recently, the prisons directorate hired some clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers for the first time to address the mental illness of inmates in different jails. According to the statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), altogether 699 prisoners were found to be mentally ill in different jails in Odisha in 2021, which is second only to Uttar Pradesh, which had 1,792 mentally-ill inmates during the period. In 2019 and 2020, at least 626 and 696 prisoners were diagnosed with psychiatric ailments in Odisha, the NCRB data said.
Sources said bulk of the inmates (both under trial prisoners and convicts) started showing symptoms of mental illness after spending several years in jails. Most of them were first time offenders. Tardy trial, delay in getting bail and mental illness were some of the prime causes of the suicides, jail sources said. At least 16 inmates allegedly died by suicide inside different jails in the state between 2019 and 2021, the NCRB report stated.
