Prisons’ impact on mental health, behavior, and the brain: a naturalistic case-control study

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Johannes Fuß; Professorin Dr. Simone Kühn
• Subject Area: Biological Psychiatry
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 497113771

In Germany, about 63,000 people currently live in prisons to be rehabilitated and afterwards reintegrated into society. However, a high burden of mental illness in prison populations and high rates of recidivism after release question the rehabilitative character of current prison environments. Despite the special living conditions in prisons (e.g., isolation, stimulus deprivation) there are major research gaps regarding prisons as living environments and consequences of imprisonment. From other contexts it is known that environmental factors and social settings strongly affect human health and behavior. Moreover, living under extreme environmental conditions (i.e., an extended stay in Antarctica) can even affect brain structure and function. Thus, already existing impairments in brain functions (such as executive functions) among individuals with antisocial and criminal behavior could be further aggravated by adverse environmental conditions in prisons. However, the limited number of predominantly cross-sectional studies on prison populations currently allows no conclusions to be drawn about possible changes caused by imprisonment. In an interdisciplinary collaboration of forensic psychiatry and environmental neuroscience we are planning the first longitudinal study to systematically examine the consequences of life in prison. We will investigate how health-related factors change after a one-year period of imprisonment on three different levels: 1) mental health via diagnostic interviews, 2) behavioral constructs regarding health behavior (e.g., drug and alcohol use), executive functions (e.g., impulsivity as strongest predictor for recidivism) and hippocampal integrity (e.g., navigation skills, working memory) through self-report and psychometric measures and 3) potential functional and structural brain changes in prefrontal-limbic areas via (f)MRI measurements. We plan to collect data from 115 prisoners within their first days in investigative custody and one year later (within-subject). We will compare participants serving a 12-month period in prison with a control group of participants who will have been released after a maximum of six months in investigative custody and will thus have been back in their usual environment for at least six months before the second measurements (between-subject). A second control group of 50 offenders sentenced to probation with similar background factors but not exposed to the influences of the prison environment will be recruited. After one year of imprisonment, we expect to identify how the prison environment influences core health-related factors. This will be informative for future interventions to improve mental health and prevent development of risk factors for criminal behavior. In the long term, this study will help to improve prison conditions in a way that is conducive to the goal of rehabilitation and tailored to the needs of prisoners who suffer from a high burden of mental health problems.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants