OBJECTIVE To increase understanding of how the prison environment influences the mental health of prisoners and prison staff. DESIGN Qualitative study with focus groups. SETTING A local prison in southern England. PARTICIPANTS Prisoners and prison staff. RESULTS Prisoners reported that long periods of isolation with little mental stimulus contributed to poor mental health and led to int...

Forensic psychiatric evaluations of military personnel in civil litigation are reportedly infrequent. One such case involved former prisoners of war after Operation Desert Storm. These evaluations presented many challenges to the evaluators with regard to resources and time limitations. Discussion of these issues is relevant to forensic evaluations generally.

During the eight years of the Iraq-Iran confl ict (19801988), more than 42,000 Iranian soldiers were captured (prisoners of war) and kept in Iraqi prisons for many years after the end of war (from 2.5 to more than 15 years). There were more than 23 detention camps for former Iranian prisoners in Iraq: six camps in Ramadi (in the west of Iraq), four camps in Mosul (in the north of Iraq), and 13 ...

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Coccidioidomycosis was first discovered by a medical student in Argentina in 1892, and knowledge about the infection mostly arose from observations of clinicians and scientists in California, primarily at Stanford University Medical Center. Some discoveries came by chance. Many others arose from careful epidemiologic and clinical investigations in the San Joaquin Valley during the 1930s, when p...

AIMS To investigate drug-related deaths among newly released prisoners in England and Wales. DESIGN Database linkage study. PARTICIPANTS National sample of 48,771 male and female sentenced prisoners released during 1998-2000 with all recorded deaths included to November 2003. FINDINGS There were 442 recorded deaths, of which 261 (59%) were drug-related. In the year following index release...