Abstract
Prison medical workers (PMWs) are critically important, but they are also vulnerable to psychological problems. Currently, there is no study on examining PMWs’ mental health conditions and possible influencing factors in China. Hence, we conducted this cross-sectional survey, aiming to understand the mental health status of the PMWs and related impact factors in Jiangxi province of China. We employed the Chinese version of the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) to assess the mental disorders and psychological health conditions of PMWs in Jiangxi. The t tests were used to compare the differences for the average score of SCL-90-R between the Chinese general population and targeted PMWs of this study. Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to identify the main factors associated with overall detection rate of PMWs’ psychological health conditions. The scores of four dimensions (somatization, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety, and paranoid ideation) were significantly higher than the Chinese national norm, and the total positive rate was 49.09% among the PMWs. Gender, marital status, age, and length of employment are identified to be the most significant predictors to affect PMWs’ mental health. Positive correlations between each of the nine dimensions of the SCL-90-R have been verified. This study demonstrated for the first time that PMWs are facing mental health risk and suffering serious psychological problems with psychopathology symptoms, which has become a growing concern in China. Our current findings suggest a need for more in-depth studies on this subject going forward to validate our conclusions and also to identify more impact factors, since such studies and knowledge of PMWs’ mental health and influencing factors are very limited in China.
Highlights
Law enforcement officials have be one of the highest-risk and highest-pressure occupations, and prison guards are more vulnerable [1,2,3]
Since the SCL-90-R was introduced into China in 1984 by Wang, Z.Y. [13], it has been developed into the Chinese version of SCL-90-R and employed for a lot of related studies to investigate and explore mental health conditions among college students, primary and secondary school students, soldiers, and general populations in China [10,13,14,15,16,17]
The present paper showed that the SCL-90-R score for each of the nine dimensions obtained from the prison medical workers (PMWs) was different from the Chinese national norm
Summary
Law enforcement officials have be one of the highest-risk and highest-pressure occupations, and prison guards are more vulnerable [1,2,3]. Because of the special working environment, the prison guards are responsible for managing a group of special people (mostly criminals). Prison guards have a higher working risk and more stressful mental health conditions as compared to other types of jobs. There are some empirical studies, those conducted in some developed countries in Europe and America, focusing on the investigation and evaluation of the psychological health status quo and the influencing factors among this special population [2,3,4,5,6]. Very few studies have been conducted in low- and middle-income countries, especially in China. There are prison medical workers (PMWs) in China who are essential, because they serve both as
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