Clinical Psychology Approach To Psychological Assessment And Intervention Of New Prisoners

Currently, the condition of prisoners' psychological health has already been a great concern among numerous legists and psychologists, with increasing attention paid to prisoners'human rights, and penalty getting humanistic worldwide. D. Clemmer, an overseas researcher, once put forward a Prisonization concept that long-term imprisonment makes a tremendous impact on psychological health of prisoners. This study attempts to investigate and assess psychological health status, self-esteem and personalities of new prisoners from multiple aspects and to discuss such topics as the relationship between psychological health, self-esteem and personalities, as well as to explore how to identify the highly dangerous psychological problem of new prisoners, how to build up psychological warning system, how to intervene psychologically into the existing problems with methods of group counseling and individual psychotherapy, and how to assess the therapy result afterwards. Besides, this study attempts to build up a general and precise psychological archive for future tracking and longitudinal comparison, as well as to provide psychology theory and experimental proof for the localized psychology rectification module used for prisoners.The subjects for the study are170new prisoners, who are involved in various crimes, ranging from violence crime, property crime, sexual crime to crimes by taking advantage of duty. Questionnaire is one of the most important research methods adopted in this study. Symptom Checklist (SCL-90), Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) are used to assess psychology health status, self-esteem level and personality characters. In the study, highly dangerous psychological problems are first filtered and identified. Then according to psychology inspection principles, requirements, and content, schizophrenia and reactivity psychiatric disorders get excluded by semi-structure interview. At the same time, it is advisable for supervisory' authorities to pay special attention to high risk group. Finally, prisoners afflicted with psychological problems are picked up for a case study where such psychology intervening methods as group counseling and the dredging psychotherapy are applied, and the results are evaluated. The following conclusions are reached.1. There are obvious psychological problems existing among new prisoners, and their psychology health status is lower than normal people. Main psychology problems are in the form of obsessive-compulsive, depression, anxiety, somatization,eating and sleeping etc. And gender, age, marriage status, degree of education, crime type and prison term contribute to various differences. 2. Personalities of new prisoners present obvious deviation. Main personality problems exist in the aspects of Pd,D,Sc,Hs,Hy with two points heightened12/21,14/41,18/81,24/42,28/82,48/84as well as three points heightened241,243,248.3. Psychology health statu of prisoners relates to self-esteem level and personality. There is a positive correlation between Hv and other factors such as interpersonal sensitivity, phobia and paranoid ideation. Self esteem score is negatively correlated to SCL-90score and other factors. Self esteem is a variable forecasting obvious negativities of SCL-90score and other factors.4. On the basis of questionnaire and assessment, further professional psychology inspection and interviews are conducted to define nature of the problems and to supervise those who have obvious psychology problems.5. Group counseling and the dredging psychotherapy, as psychology intervening method, are effective in improving psychology health and self-esteem of new prisoners.