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PODCAST
Chapliancy and Mental Health Care in Prisons Mental health concerns everyone. It is more than the absence of mental health problems. It underpins our health and well-being and influences how we think and feel about ourselves and other people. It is about how we interpret events and about our capacity to learn, to communicate and to form and sustain relationships. It affects our ability to cope with and manage change. This is as true for people held in our prisons, as it is for everyone else. Mental health needs are met in a variety of settings where daily life takes place – at home, at work, in schools, in our local communities, in hospitals and in prisons. Good mental health is closely related to people feeling respected and safe. The Prison Service takes the mental health well-being of those held in prisons, very seriously. Every prison has a team of specialists, dedicated to providing good mental health care. This care is particularly important because many people held in prisons come from backgrounds of deprivation and exclusion and there are clear links between these factors and poor mental health. The Prison Service Chaplaincy shares, of course, this whole concern and wishes to work alongside colleagues. We are presently in conversation with the Department of Health which works closely with the Prison Service in providing health care within our prisons. The Department of Health is intent on providing training in mental health awareness to all front-line staff within prisons and this includes Chaplaincy. To this end, Chaplaincy is working closely with the Department, to develop a training package in mental health awareness, for Chaplains of all Faiths. Chaplains in the prisons have many opportunities to work closely with prisoners and staff. We are good at building relationships of trust and care both with staff colleagues and with those who live in prisons. We are planning to provide, with the good support of the Department of Health, a programme of mental health awareness which will help us to work alongside our colleagues. Mental health care isn’t clear-cut or straightforward and within prisons there are a number of influential factors. Custodial settings are often stressful places. People are necessarily held in a restrictive environment with limited privacy, personal space and control over their day. They have limited contact with family and friends. However, there are positive advantages of living in a custodial setting. It is a place of safety and the individual is provided with consistency and direction. Behaviour patterns may be better recognised and understood within this setting, too. People held in prison often have difficulty in controlling their impulses, behaviour and emotions. This has often been a factor leading to their initial arrest and imprisonment. Within prison, this may contribute to incidents of self-harm and violence. The Prison Service provides good Cognitive Behavioural Treatment programmes to help Offenders manage their thoughts and feelings and behaviour. My background is in psychotherapy and I have worked as a tutor on these programmes within custodial settings. They do much to provide people with excellent management skills and tools that help to shape and control behaviour. Often chaplains have a little more time than Operational staff to work closely with people held in prison. We are designing with the Department of Health a specific Chaplaincy contribution to mental health care. We hope, as chaplains, to have the time to build relationships with the people held in prisons, based on an unconditional positive regard for the individual, behind the crime. It takes time and effort to build caring relationships and to construct a convincing, empathic presence. This would be our aim as chaplains and it is of great importance because it may well be that the people in our care have never really experienced such a relationship with another human being. If an individual’s early childhood experience was lacking much affectionate care, then there are immense consequences for psychological well-being, throughout life. This deprivation often leads to very little self-esteem and deep insecurity and the development of various defence mechanisms meant to protect a vulnerable core where there resides deep pain and anguish. A relationship of trust, honesty and care can do much to heal early damage and prompt a new, more open and hopeful way of being. All this has to be done within a prison, where rightly, appropriate security structures exist. Chaplains have to learn the art of being open and ready to build healthy relationships while always remaining alert and responsive to any threats which would harm individuals and damage the good order and discipline of the prison. I would like to read to you a poem by William Blake which sensitively expresses the importance of being alongside other people in moments of darkness and pain. “Can I see another’s woe, |