Kinkini Gupta
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Mental Wellbeing Of Indian Prisoners: Why Should We Care?
Prisoners are always ostracised from the society, even after they have served their sentence. To us, it hardly matters if he or she was imprisoned for an actual crime or suffered wrongful incrimination. A prisoner will always be a criminal in our minds and this is what the society thinks. They are barely treated like humans. However, ruthless the crime is, a prisoner also has some rights:
The right to a lawyer, the right to go on trial, the right to plead not guilty, the right to food and water inside a cell and the right to medical and mental health care.
It true that these people may have committed heinous crimes but they are still human beings. Moreover, many of the prisoners may have been arrested without committing a crime or may be innocent but still lost their cases in the court of law. These happenings are common knowledge.
The true facts about Indian prisons are very dark. Their environment is restrictive and their treatment is cruel. They barely have any facilities. They spaces are overcrowded, they do not have any privacy, they cannot move around much, they lack basic amenities, prisoners cannot sleep properly due to disturbances, there is constant violation of human rights and barely any access to healthcare. This applies to both male and female prisoners.
Such a dire situation naturally takes a huge toll on their mental health, especially when there is a severe lack of attention to healthcare in general.
The Indian Journal of Social Psychiatry published a study which analaysed the circumstances in detail. Here's what they found out:
The mental health crisis amongst prison inmates has risen and we are partly responsible:
A data presented by this study states that almost 1.5 per cent of the total population are suffering from mental health issues and almost 50% of them are under trials. The study also states, "The ratio of prisoner per mental healthcare staff ratio and prisoner per correctional staff ratio are 243:1 and 628:1 respectively."