Penn ethicist leads research study in mental healthcare in prisons

I'm of two very different minds about this post....

http://goo.gl/uxCnec

"Bioethicists have largely overlooked the area of correctional mental health care despite the fact that there are currently over 1 million individuals incarcerated who have a mental illness and a significant subpopulation who have a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder," writes Dominic Sisti, a professor of medical ethics and health policy.

That is why, as Newsworks reported, Sisti is leading a yearlong pilot program for Penn's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics to research the inner workings of the prison mental health care system

Sisti's team, which includes ethicists, therapists, and criminologists, will examine policies related both to treating mentally ill inmates and reducing the number of mentally ill people in jails and prisons to begin with. They plan to interview current and former inmates who have had experiences with the mental health care system while incarcerated, then publish "a research agenda for bioethicists to address overlooked issues."