A Comparison of Symptoms of Mental Disorders Among Prisoners in the Rehabilitation Semi-Open System and Closed Prison System

Given the high prevalence of the symptoms of mental disorders among prisoners, it was assumed that the semi-open prison system could be an appropriate way to decrease many damages caused by the prison environment.

This study aimed to compare the symptoms of mental disorders between two groups of prisoners in semi-open and closed prison systems in the central prison of Zahedan.

The current study was conducted from January to March 2015 in the Central Prison of Zahedan located in Southeastern Iran. This descriptive study used an ex post facto design, and the statistical method was Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The sample of the present study included 598 prisoners selected by applying the simple random sampling method (sortation). In this study, the symptom checklist (SCL-90) was used to collect the data. The obtained data were analyzed via SPSS23.

A total of 253 prisoners with semi-open prison sentences (29 ± 5-years-old) and 345 prisoners with closed prison sentences (31 ± 4-years-old) participated in this study. The results of MANOVA indicated that closed prisoners had higher mean scores on all symptoms of mental disorders (somatic complaints, obsession, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, aggression, phobia, paranoid thoughts, and psychosis) than semi-open prisoners, indicating the prevalence of the symptoms of mental disorders among closed prisoners (F = 21.25, Wilks’ Lambda = 0.70, P < 0.001).

According to the results, there was a significant difference in the symptoms of mental disorders between the two groups of prisoners in semi-open and closed prison systems.