IMPRISONMENT: Depression and suicide

Prison is not an environment which promotes positive mental states. The lack of freedom and repetitiveness takes its toll on inmates, and it's not uncommon for prisoners to experience delusions or hallucinations as a result.

More common effects in terms of mental health however are increased risk of anxiety and depression. Of course, a decent proportion of offenders had pre-existing psychological disorders before their incarceration, but it's likely that the conditions within prison have both increased depression and triggered it in a significant number of cases. 

Dooley found that suicide rates are 4x higher in prisons than the general population, which is an alarming statistic. Those awaiting trial and those in their first year are the most likely to commit suicide.

A study by the same researcher looked into unnatural deaths in English and Welsh prisons across a 15 year period. A checklist was used to analyse data, and deaths were split into two categories of suicides and non-suicides. 

Out of 442 unnatural deaths occurring in the prisons, 300 were suicides, 52 were the result of self-inflicted injuries and the rest had a variety of explanations, but mainly were attributed to "misadventure".

Dooley also found that most deaths occurred at night, and appeared to be the result of both pre-existing disorders and situationally-induced.