BY DONNA ROGERS, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Telemed Services For Remote Sites
Telepsychiatry’s growing role in inmate treatment.
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oughly half of the nation’s incarcerated individuals have some sort of mental illness, and at the same time it is widely known that this population has long been underserved. Lack of proper psychiatric services in jails and prisons has led to untreated mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorders, and schizophrenia that are common in the inmate population, according to a 2006 Department of Justice Statistics special report. Access to appropriate psychiatric care is limited in correctional facilities for several reasons. In some cases, such as in West 10 CORRECTIONS FORUM • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020
Virginia, Ohio, and Georgia, various providers have been hesitant to provide mental health treatment inside correctional facilities because of safety concerns, notes a 2013 article in the Permanente Journal, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Institutes of Health. In other cases, costs for providers traveling to distant facilities have been a deterrent in providing adequate care to offenders. Barriers to appropriate care, unfortunately, do remain, acknowledge Joseph M. Pastor, M.D., chief psychiatric officer
and Anthony Waters, Ph.D., senior vice president, Behavioral Health Operations, with Corizon, a leading correctional health care provider. They agree these barriers include significant cost of travel to distant sites, geographic distance of jails/prisons from hospital and clinics, and add that there are challenges in recruiting and retaining staff willing to travel and work on site, in person. The high cost of man hours to escort and transport inmates to outside facilities for mental health services has been a major barrier to receiving effective treatment. And providers are fre-
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