MR5: Why is data crucial in the discussion surrounding mental health/criminal justice system?
Justice-Involved Mental Illness- History
Mental health and mental illness has always proven to be a difficult topic to tackle, often with the symptoms being more invisible and neglected, and this is even more the case when it comes to offenders and others involved in the criminal justice system.
The most prominent difficulties are: diagnoses relying on full cooperation, many of the justice-involved population feigning mental issues, and a vast difference in screening practices and how professionals diagnose people over time passing and geographical area (Hector & Khey, 2022).
The types of data collection within this subfield are also more dispersed than uniform. Population surveys try to take a representative sample of the entire population to make generalizations; health care surveys come directly from healthcare and insurance providers, using both the Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems; vital statistics are those including and relating to births, deaths, marriages and divorces, with the focus on deaths when discussing mental health.
Data Importance
Without data, we cannot navigate through what to do with policy implications, whether it be if it is needed or not, or where to allocate the resources to most efficiently help those justice-involved individuals with mental health problems. Existing data can show the statistics for how many justice-involved individuals have mental health history, and based on that, we can develop policies to target it, and see the effectiveness of the policies, also through data.
For example, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (2023) has plenty of data on the percentage of different demographic characteristics in relation to their struggles with mental health and their treatment, which we can use to implement policies to make treatment more accessible to those with mental illness.
References:
Hector, J. & Khey, D. (2022). Criminal Justice and Mental Health: An Overview for Students. 2nd Edition. Springer Publishing. ISBN: 978-3-031-15337-2
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2023). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2022 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP23-07-01-006, NSDUH Series H-58). Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2022-nsduh-annual-national-report
