Association between mental illness and disciplinary confinement and its effect on mental health: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Sabrina Giguère, Laura Dellazizzo, Charles-Édouard Giguère and Alexandre Dumais

PLOS ONE, 2025, vol. 20, issue 6, 1-12

Abstract: The use of disciplinary confinement (DC) as a form of punishment in detention raises international attention and many concerns that have led to the elaboration of several studies. However, as studies report mixed results regarding the risk of DC placement for mentally ill inmates and the possibility of psychological effects from exposure to DC, it was necessary to shed some light in order to better guide future decisions, policies and programs in detention. Thus, this systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the risk of inmates with mental disorders being placed into disciplinary confinement and its effect on mental health. A systematic search of studies was performed in PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. The meta-analysis was conducted using random-effects models. Heterogeneity among study point estimates was assessed with Q statistics and quantified with the I2 index. Publication bias was assessed using Egger’s test. Quality assessment was based on the GRADE Checklist for observational studies. Guidelines from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) were followed. First, a meta-analysis of five articles including 27,455 inmates showed that incarcerated individuals with a mental disorder were 1.23 times (OR=1.23, CI = 1.10; 1.38) more likely to be placed in DC than incarcerated individuals without a mental disorder. Notably, having a severe mental disorder (OR=1.31, p

Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0325508 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 25508&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0325508

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0325508

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().