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Connecting Mentally Ill Detainees in Large Urban Jails with Community Care

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Abstract

Large urban jails have become a collection point for many persons with severe mental illness. Connections between jail and community mental health services are needed to assure in-jail care and to promote successful community living following release. This paper addresses this issue for 2855 individuals with severe mental illness who received community mental health services prior to jail detention in King County (Seattle), Washington over a 5-year time period using a unique linked administrative data source. Logistic regression was used to determine the probability that a detainee with severe mental illness received mental health services while in jail as a function of demographic and clinical characteristics. Overall, 70 % of persons with severe mental illness did receive in-jail mental health treatment. Small, but statistically significant sex and race differences were observed in who received treatment in the jail psychiatric unit or from the jail infirmary. Findings confirm the jail’s central role in mental health treatment and emphasize the need for greater information sharing and collaboration with community mental health agencies to minimize jail use and to facilitate successful community reentry for detainees with severe mental illness.

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Funding

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grants MH063883, a grant from the John D. Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Mental Health Policy Research Network, and by the Unc-Duke Postdoctoral Training Program in Mental Health Services Research under a National Research Services Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (T32 MH019117).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Sean K. Sayers, Marisa E. Domino, Gary S. Cuddeback & Joseph P. Morrissey

  2. Department of Health Policy and Management, The Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1104G McGavran-Greenberg Hall, CB#7411, 135 Dauer Dr., Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7411, USA

    Marisa E. Domino & Joseph P. Morrissey

  3. Office of Health Equity and Disparities, Duke Cancer Institute, Durham, NC, USA

    Nadine J. Barrett

  4. Duke Community Connections and Collaborations Core, Duke Center for Community and Population Health Improvement and Clinical Translational Science Award, Durham, NC, USA

    Nadine J. Barrett

  5. Department of Community and Family Medicine, School of Medicine, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

    Nadine J. Barrett

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  1. Sean K. Sayers
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  2. Marisa E. Domino
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  4. Nadine J. Barrett
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  5. Joseph P. Morrissey
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Correspondence to Marisa E. Domino.

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All authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This study uses only secondary sources of data without an individual identifiers. A waiver of consent was obtained for this research.

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Sayers, S.K., Domino, M.E., Cuddeback, G.S. et al. Connecting Mentally Ill Detainees in Large Urban Jails with Community Care. Psychiatr Q 88, 323–333 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-016-9449-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-016-9449-8

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