Abstract:
All though it is known that sentenced prisoners have a higher prevalence of psychiatric
disorders than the normal population, we do not have adequate data to assess the psychiatric
morbidity of the local prison population. Data currently available are mostly from western
countries, and they may not be applicable to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka does not have an
organized forensic mental health service, and although death sentence has been existent it
has not been implemented since 1977. Prisoners on capital punishment have to suffer in
isolation, without knowing their plight due to the indecisiveness of the judicial authorities,
which may have a significant psychological impact on them. This descriptive study was
done at Bogambara prison, Kandy to compare the psychiatric morbidity of the prisoners on
capital punishment with that of the sentenced prisoners with lesser offences not amounting
to murder. Nearly half of the overall sample has had separations in childhood from parents,
and less than half of the study sample has been educated up to grade 10. Being married did
not prove to be a protective factor against criminal offending, and previous convictions
showed to be a risk factor for minor offending rather than for murder in this survey. Heroin
dependence was also associated with minor offending rather than with criminal offending,
and 1/3 of the prisoners on the death row had been dependent on cannabis prior to
imprisonment. The striking and alarming findings of this study were that 79.2 percent of the
prisoners on capital punishment were found to be having some kind of a psychiatric
disorder, and 58.3 percent of the same population was depressed. 30.6 percent of the
prisoners on the death row were found to be alcohol dependent prior to imprisonment and
25 percent were found to be having Dual Diagnoses
