Mental Health Literacy Among Uniformed Jail Staff

• In Event: Research on Jail Staff

Abstract

In response to the prevalence of inmates with mental illness (IMI) in custodial facilities, correctional officers have evolved from individuals purely responsible for care and custody into gateway providers, with opportunities refer IMI to their facility’s providers. Officers’ levels of mental health literacy (MHL), "knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid in their recognition, management, or prevention" (Jorm et al, 1997), can mediate their effectiveness. With higher MHL, an officer will be more likely to recognize IMI and make appropriate referrals, and less likely to mislabel IMI as disgruntled, difficult, or “crazy”, with consequences ranging from delays in treatment to disciplinary actions that may exacerbate their issues. Research examining MHL among correctional staff remains limited; this study is a first step that could lead to more effective gateway services by examining MHL, operationalized by the Multicomponent Mental Health Literacy Measure (Jung et al, 2016), among samples of uniformed correctional staff and college students. It is hypothesized that, because of their training and experience, the MHL of the correctional officers will exceed that of the students, and that elements of officers’ training, background, and experience will correlate with MHL. All data have been collected; results and conclusions will be presented.

Author

• Charles David Clark, Fitchburg State University