Suicide rates inside penitentiary institutions in Lithuania, the UK, the USA and Australia: a narrative literature review

Abstract

Introduction Suicide remains a major public health issue, resulting in 800 000 deaths every year; while it is the second main cause of death among adults aged 15 to 29, it is the most common reason of death in penitentiary institutions – suicide rates are three times higher for men and nine times higher for women, compared to the general population [1, 2]. Findings across various countries show increasing suicide rates in prisons [3, 4, 5, 6]. Causes for this could be unsatisfactory living conditions and poor psychologicalsupport [2]. Some studies, on the contrary, show decreasing suicide numbers. This study aims to nvestigate the changing suicide numbers in prisons and the reasons behind it, while also naming ways to battle increasing statistics. Aim The goal of this review is to summarize the findings in selected up-to-date articles in order to identify causes that lead to suicide inside prisons in Lithuania and globally, while alsoidentifying the reasons behind increasing or decreasing numbers over time in various countriesand ways to improve statistics. Methods Research material was gathered via PubMed indexing system; articles older than 2012 were excluded. Used keywords: “suicide”, “prison”, “penitentiary”. Out of 306 articles, the selected articles analyze suicidal tendencies in prisoners and comment on their shifting prominence over time. Results Suicide primarily affects those who are most disadvantaged [7]. High suicide rates in prisons are attributed to overcrowding – 119 of 205 countries currently exceed their prison capacity – this results in lower staff engagement [2]. Research has drawn conclusions that prisoners display high rates of psychiatric disorders and violent tendencies – these conditions are linkedwith elevated suicide rates [8], and are rarely resolved due to aforementioned issues [9, 10]. […].