Incarceration's role in psychiatric disorders.

• Position: Mental Illness

Psychiatric disorders are prevalent among current and former inmates of correctional institutions, but what has been less clear is whether incarceration causes these disorders or, alternatively, whether inmates have these problems before they enter prison.

A study coauthored by Jason Schnittker, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, shows that many of the most common psychiatric disorders found among former inmates, including impulse control disorders, emerge in childhood and adolescence and, therefore, predate incarceration. Yet, incarceration seems to lead to some mood related psychiatric disorders, such as major depression, which have important implications for what happens to inmates after their release.

Michael Massoglia, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Christopher Uggen, professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, coauthored the study, which appears in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.

Using data from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication, the researchers examined the relationship between incarceration and psychiatric disorders after statistically adjusting for influences that might affect both, including an impoverished childhood background...