The authoritative reference that helps you navigate administrative challenges and apply clinical best-practices to improve mental health services and individual outcomes …

“This book is an unexpected treasure, its authors combining decades of practical experience, cutting edge research, and outstanding scholarship. Despite its title, it will prove an invaluable resource for mental health professionals from all disciplines. Most surprising is the Editors’ unwillingness to compromise between breadth and depth; this book is gloriously comprehensive, yet covers each topic with attention to history, context, detail, and practical utility. Drs. Thienhaus and Piasecki have created a masterpiece that will leave the world of correctional mental health far better than they found it for a long time to come.”
—Joel A. Dvoskin, Ph.D., President, American Psychology-Law Society

This master reference gives you hands-on, clinically oriented, evidence-based practice guidelines and strategies for working with incarcerated psychiatric patients. Written by experts with years of experience in the field, this indispensable new resource will help you …

• Understand the administrative systems and legal issues that guide clinical practice in correctional settings—including the often-conflicting clinical and forensic- administrative roles of the correctional psychiatrist.
• Apply state-of-the art practices to psychiatric conditions commonly encountered in jails and prisons, such as management of substance use disorders, insomnia, hunger strikes, and suicide risk
• Design and implement effective reentry plans for inmates in need of continuing mental health services, connecting to community resources for continuity of care and rehabilitation
• Deal with counter-transference issues encountered in correctional environments—identifying them, putting them to use, and recognizing when therapeutic engagement is unwise
• Address the issues presented by individuals with intellectual disabilities
• Develop clinical management plans for female inmates that are responsive to gender-related differences
• Minimize the negative impact of segregation on the mental health of inmates, with practical strategies to reconcile the demands of correctional management with appropriate treatment
• Detect inmate malingering—and differentiate it from true psychiatric illness

Related Publications: Correctional Mental Health Report; Correctional Psychology; Management and Supervision of Jail Inmates With Mental Disorders; The Mentally Disordered Inmate and the Law