The All-pervading Depression and Violence of Prison Life

Abstract

&dquo;The primitive gloomy atmosphere of a prison is apt to be found stultif ying, limiting and depressing by psychiatrists. &dquo; Thurrell, Halleck and Johnsen.’ ~INCE the unfortunate affair of Senator Eagleton, the mental state known to psychiatry and the lay public alike as &dquo;depres-sion&dquo; has attracted a considerable amount of popular attention. We have been told by the popular media that,2 &dquo;In the US alone some four to eight million persons suffer from depression in any given year, according to National Institute of Mental Health estimates, and about 250,000 of them are hospitalized&dquo;. Most people have at some time or another experienced the characteristic symptoms of depression, if only to a slight degree. It is a condition which is relatively easy to detect, but rather less easy to define, for it ranges from &dquo;merely an aggravated degree of sadness or the ’blues ’ &dquo;3 to those deep, black, melancholy states which paralyze all activity: the