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Anxiety Disorders in Prison Confinement
Jamiah Riddick
Walden University
FPSY – 6912; Mental Health Law
Dr. Geyer
April 7th, 2021
Anxiety Disorders in Prison Confinement
Imprisonment deprives a person of freedom of human interactions leading to mental disorders among confined prisoners. Mental health challenges include insomnia, aggression, panic, and anxiety (Reiter et al., 2020). Confinement has adverse mental effects that enhance the risk of gravies harm to those in prison and cause more distress than physical torture. The law of tort provides a framework of a duty of care which is an individual legal obligation requiring fidelity to acceptable care standards during an act that has the potential to cause harm to others (Arbel, 2018). Any breach of standard duty of care may attract legal liability. Law of torts determines legal accountability for any injury by an individual against another and the entitled compensation.
Prison confinement causes unnecessary psychological pain on an individual due to denial of basic social needs enacted deliberately by prison wardens and administrators. Courts have a promoted application of the standard tort of duty narrowly (Coppola, 2019).
1. Duty to disclose "material" risks, benefits and alternative treatments.
Prison officials must disclose potential risks of confinement and act in a way that does not cause harm to confined prisoners. They should devise alternative treatments and punishments that uphold the safety of offenders. This duty is enforceable by an operational law hence must be adhered to.
2. Breach
3. Causation
Causation of anxiety among confined prisoners should be a major cause of alarm among prison personnel. Any court of law will assess whether the prisoner's mental disorders would have occurred without the prison personnel's actions. Any undisclosed material facts may have caused the prisoners to forgo mental care.
4. Damages
Breach of duty of care is the cause of harm because it puts prisoners in harm's path. It can be proximate or actual causation. Maybe without the treatment the patient would have had more damages.
5. Defenses
The defense has to provide affirmative defenses to show that the prison personnel's actions may not be because of harm. Sometimes both parties may have caused mental anxiety disorder through abusive acts (Semenza & Grosholz, 2019).
References
Arbel, E. (2018). Devalued liberty and undue deference: The tort of false imprisonment and the law of solitary confinement. Retrieved from https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/fac_pubs/472/
Coppola, F. (2019). The brain in solitude: An (other) Eighth Amendment challenge to solitary confinement. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 6(1), 184-225. doi:10.1093/job/lsz014
Reiter, K., Ventura, J., Lovell, D., Augustine, D., Barragan, M., Blair, T., … Strong, J. (2020). Psychological distress in solitary confinement: Symptoms, severity, and prevalence in the United States, 2017–2018. American Journal of Public Health, 110(S1), S56-S62. doi:10.2105/ajph.2019.305375
Semenza, D. C., & Grosholz, J. M. (2019). Mental and physical health in prison: How co-occurring conditions influence inmate misconduct. Health & Justice, 7(1). doi:10.1186/s40352-018-0082-5
Stoyanova, V. (2019). Common law tort of negligence as a tool for deconstructing positive obligations under the European convention on human rights. The International Journal of Human Rights, 24(5), 632-655. doi:10.1080/13642987.2019.1663342
