81 Prisoners Currently Receiving Mental Health Assistance  

Today at the International Social Work Conference hosted by the University of Belize, the C.E.O. of the Belize Central Prison shared that up to eighty-one prisoners currently require additional assistance regarding their mental health. Murillo explained the issues the prisoners suffer from range low to high levels of severity and that most of these prisoners are in a manageable state. He said that although there is an in-house psychiatrist, the prison would benefit from the appointment of another. 

 

Virgilio Murillo, C.E.O., Belize Central Prison

“The eighty-one that I referred to in the discussion a while ago are what we consider psychiatric patients or people with psychiatric problems. Of that, not all of them are chronic or serious, so to speak.  You might have twenty-five of them, I think, if my memory serves me well that are considered chronic or acute, and then there’s about twenty-right of them that are medium. The remainder would be considered low and they are now back in the general population. So they have reached a point where they are manageable and they are not presenting any problem for the prison, so to speak.”

 

Reporter

“You have the resources. I think you have one doctor, but I don’t know if there’s specialization that’s required to treat them.”

 

Virgilio Murillo

“No. And we have one psychiatrist which is a government psychiatrist.   And he comes once a week to offer psychiatric treatment to these patients whether it’s medication or evaluation. So they are being dealt with, but of course I’m sure the prison will be able to use another psychiatrist if there woul be one. Unfortunately, the country doesn’t have many psychiatrists that would want to work in the prison. That’s for sure.”

 

Reporter

“Do they have to be isolated, separated?”

 

Virgilio Murillo

“Not in all cases. The acute ones, the ones that are considered acute, yes. And we would only do that to prevent them from harming others, or maybe even harming themselves, or getting harmed by others because of their behavior.”

 

Reporter

”Have people developed it in there or do they come with those issues?”

 

Virgilio Murillo

“No. They come to the prison with that. As a matter of fact, these are discovered on admission to the prison because that is a part of, that is a part of the screening process when a prisoner is admitted into the prison. So they’re screened for things like that. And of course we know these things because remember, we have what you call the Belize Health Information System. And the prison has access to that system. It’s a countrywide system. And we can go and review their records. The not me personally, but the prison medical officer can go in and see a person’s medical and  mental health situation. And he can prepare to provide for his needs in that regard.”