Gharaibeh Numan, El-Khoury Joseph
Department of Psychiatry, Danbury Hospital, Danbury, Connecticut, USA.
Int J Prison Health. 2009;5(4):241-50. doi: 10.1080/17449200903343324.
Relevant literature was searched using MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Google in addition to Arabic search engines for information. Due to the shortage of scholarly articles on the subject, we broadened our search to publications from human rights organisation and articles in the mainstream press. We estimated the total carceral population in the member countries of the Arab league at 338,500 prisoners, over 46,000 of whom could be suffering from severe mental illness. We relied on indirect indicators of mental health services such as the quality of medical care in general, accounts of prison conditions by prisoners and their families, and the abundant literature on human rights abuses. Despite a grim overall picture, we highlight signs of improvement in recent years. Psychiatrists working in Arabic prisons face a number of challenges.We comment on directions for the future in the field of correctional psychiatry in the Arab countries including from the perspective of research.
除了使用阿拉伯语搜索引擎外，我们还通过医学文献数据库（MEDLINE）、心理学文摘数据库（PsycINFO）和谷歌搜索相关文献以获取信息。由于关于该主题的学术文章匮乏，我们将搜索范围扩大至人权组织的出版物以及主流媒体的文章。我们估计阿拉伯联盟成员国的在押总人数为338,500名囚犯，其中超过46,000人可能患有严重精神疾病。我们依靠心理健康服务的间接指标，如总体医疗质量、囚犯及其家属对监狱状况的描述，以及大量关于侵犯人权行为的文献。尽管总体情况严峻，但我们强调近年来有改善的迹象。在阿拉伯监狱工作的精神科医生面临诸多挑战。我们从研究角度对阿拉伯国家惩教精神病学领域的未来发展方向进行了评论。
