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| Prison chief: Care of mentally ill improving |
| By DesMoinesRegister.com |
| Published: 06/27/2005 |
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Steady progress is being made to improve living conditions and treatment programs at a Fort Madison prison unit where four inmates have committed suicide during the past two years, said Iowa Corrections Director Gary Maynard. The changes are being made at the Iowa State Penitentiary's Clinical Care Unit, which houses about 140 inmates who are mentally ill, Maynard told Des Moines Register editors and reporters recently. This includes efforts to get prisoners out of their cells and engage them in a wider variety of activities, he said. Maynard also pledged to better address mental health issues throughout Iowa's prison system, which has about 1,600 inmates with varying degrees of mental illness. "I think eventually we will have a very good system" of providing care for mentally ill prisoners, said Maynard, who has also headed prison systems in Oklahoma and South Carolina. "I think it will be one of the better systems, relative to the rest of the country. Nobody has it solved. I can guarantee you it is a big, big problem everywhere." Fort Madison's Clinical Care Unit was the focus of a critical report in February by psychologist Thomas White, a consultant for the National Institute of Corrections. He faulted Iowa officials for poor management in operating the unit, which he described as short-staffed and lacking in professional training. Although inmates had individual treatment plans, White said the only beneficial treatment they were getting was psychiatric drugs. Four inmates killed themselves in the unit between February 2003 and November 2004. One died from hanging; another from a drug overdose, while two others committed suicide by suffocation, autopsies showed. The Fort Madison unit, which cost $26 million, opened in August 2002. Dr. Edward O'Brien, medical director of the Iowa Department of Corrections, said an effort is under way to change the culture within the unit to benefit mentally ill inmates. |
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