The Assam government has mulled to engage a dedicated team of mental health experts in the jails across the state.
If everything goes as planned, the Prisons department will attach a dedicated team of psychiatrist and psychologists with each of the 31 jails in the State for inmates, The Assam Tribune reported.
Sources said the Prisons department has already submitted a proposal to the home and political departments asking the latter to create new posts for mental health experts (psychiatrist and psychologists) for each of the jails in the State.
The experts also will be engaged to offer correctional psychiatric treatment to the inmates on need basis after systematic periodical screening.
“Mental health is a major issue in the prisons. To put an effective mental care intervention in place, we need a dedicated team of experts backed by an equally robust support system,” the newspaper quoted a jail official as saying.
He said most of the inmates find it really tough to cope with the separation from their loved ones which is why issues like anger management and stress management become very crucial.
“There have been instances of inmates committing suicides under such circumstances,” the source added.
The source further stated that although there is a provision for having a mental expert for jails, the move never materialized, with only a couple of them getting enrolled, which is not sufficient.
Further, there is also a proposal to fill up the vacant posts of doctors and pharmacists in the jails.