Pre‐sentence mental health service use by adult offenders in Western Australia: Baseline results from a longitudinal whole‐population cohort study

Abstract

The higher likelihood of mental health service use by offenders in the year prior to their first ever sentence than by non-offenders suggests that, insofar as the disorder was relevant to offending, there were some opportunities for preventive measures during that time. Differential service use according to gender and Indigenous/non-Indigenous status is of concern. It would be important to understand more about this apparently unequal service access, not least because Indigenous populations tend to be over-represented in prison.

Predictors of post‐sentence mental health service use in a population cohort of first‐time adult offenders in Western Australia

“…A mental health service contact was defined as any public/private psychiatric inpatient admission or any public outpatient attendance. Presence of a diagnosed mental disorder was determined from the single diagnosis allocated among outpatients or the primary or any of the 21 secondary diagnostic fields in the hospital discharge records (see Sodhi‐Berry et al, for further details). In order to take into account diagnostic classification over time (Morgan and Jablensky, ), all diagnoses were coded according to the International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD‐9‐CM, validated Jablensky et al, ), effective from 1988 to July 1999, as this corresponded to the time of most study events.…”

“…The five chosen outcomes were time to first mental health service contact after the end of the index sentence for (i) any mental disorder (ICD‐9‐CM‐codes 290–319); (ii) psychotic disorders (295–298); (iii) substance use disorders (291, 292 and 303–305); (iv) any other disorder (290, 293, 294, 299–302 and 306–319) of insufficient frequency to allow individual analyses (Sodhi‐Berry et al, ); and (v) attempted self‐harm (external cause of injury codes: E950.0–E959.9, E980.0–E980.6). Follow‐up for each outcome was censored at 5 years or on date of any further sentence (5437, 23.0%), death (287, 1.2%) or on 31 December 2008 (8, <0.1%), whichever came first.…”

“…Despite the enormous burden of mental disorder in the offender population compared with the general population (Sirdifield et al, ; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), ; Sodhi‐Berry et al, ), little is known about their mental health service use in the post‐sentence period. The few whole‐population studies on this examine prisoners exclusively and indicate high physical and psychiatric morbidity and mortality (Hobbs et al, ; Kariminia et al, ; Alan et al, ).…”

Quantifying maternal incarceration: a whole‐population linked data study of Western Australian children born 1985–2011

“…The linkage process is highly accurate, with 99.89% of links estimated as valid 25 . Linkage between DCS and other WADLS data collections has previously been performed for offender health research 26–28 . Indigenous status for mothers and children was provided through the WADLS using best‐practice algorithms, 29 which derive Indigenous status across multiple data collections to reduce missing data and improve consistency.…”

Pre-sentence mental health service use predicts post-sentence mortality in a population cohort of first-time adult offenders

“…The index sentence was categorised simply as imprisonment or community penalty. Offenders who had served part of their index sentence in both settings (1545, 6.5%) were included in the prisoner group (see also Sodhi-Berry et al, 2014). Offenders could be released to freedom, conditionally (e.g.…”