Use of Mental Health Treatment Services and the Aging Prison Population

• In Event: Poster Session

Abstract

The “graying” of the prison population has occurred due to the larger proportion of older people in the general population and harsher sentencing practices and laws which has caused many people to mature in prison (Kakoullis et al., 2010; Skarupski et al., 2018). Despite the growing literature on the mental health of prisoners, there is little research that focuses on the mental health of older prisoners (Kakoullis et al., 2010). Older prisoners may experience increased mental illness concerns due to their age and time spent in the prison. Using the Survey of Prison Inmates (2016), this study seeks to understand whether age affects inmates’ experiences of mental illness symptoms and likelihood of accessing mental health services in state prison. Ordinal logistic regression and binary logistic regression analyses were run to determine if older inmates experience more frequent symptoms of mental illness and their likelihood of accessing treatment compared to younger inmates. Results showed that as age increased by one year, likelihood of accessing treatment increased by 19.9%, and four of the six symptoms significantly increased the likelihood of accessing treatment for all inmates. The results of this study can inform treatment practices in state prisons for older inmates.

Author

• Katlyn Fritz, Texas State University