Excelsior Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 15: BPR&D, Union Ministry of Home Affairs today organized a webinar on ‘Mental Health issues in Prison Inmates’ during which DGP Prisons J&K, V.K Singh spoke on ‘Insomnia in Prison Inmates’.
The webinar was attended by DGs and IGs (Prisons) of different States and UTs.
The webinar was held in response to a report shared by DGP Prisons J&K regarding insomnia in inmates & CBT-I at District Jail Jammu.
Prof. (Dr) Arti Bakhshi, Head Department of Psychology, Jammu University (JU) and Dr. Piyali Arora, Assistant Professor, Clinical Psychologist, Government College for Women (GCW) Parade were also resource persons.
During the webinar DGP Prisons emphasized that at the core of Prison administration is correctional service which seeks to reform the inmate and enable them to re-integrate as healthy adults within the community on release.
Accordingly, a need was felt to address sleep problems for better reformation of inmates which led to planning and implementation of this intervention.
The faculty of JU and GCW Parade stated that earlier a study was conducted by the University of Manchester, UK in 2016 which had concluded that Insomnia Disorder and poor sleep quality were common in adult English prisoners and the findings emphasized the need for dedicated treatment pathways to improve screening, assessment and treatment of insomnia in prisons.
In addition, the prison regime and environment may further interfere with the sleep-wake cycle due to the interruption of usual daily routines and lack of personal autonomy etc.
Analysis of sleep related data collected from 569 inmates suggested that 61 inmates had sleep difficulties as they slept for 3 hours (or less) on an average.
The data also revealed that only 11 per cent had sleep difficulty before being incarcerated which increased to 74 per cent on admission in prison which shows scope for CBT-1 at start.
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