Dr Peter Young, formerly the director of mental health for International Health and Medical Services, and Dr Michael Gordon of Monash University, examined mental health data of asylum seekers in detention, finding that those in detention had significantly higher rates of mental illness, and that the longer people were held in detention, the more unwell they became.
General conditions of detentions are getting tougher; data released two years ago under an Access to Information Request revealed incidents of self-injury, including suicide attempts, were on the rise.
The importance of data, alternatives to detention, and the reintegration of chilren was stressed by several speakers.
"These type of detentions are common practice during armed conflict.
Although excluding these cases underestimates the total number of detentions, it restricts the study sample to detentions that co-occur with admission and so rely on available beds.
You could end up having lots of detentions, LOTS.
'Sample of baseline data and national trends in the use of detention and diversion in Papua New Guinea', PNG National Juvenile Justice Working Committee (with support from UNICEF), January 2008 [Word 467kb] Baseline data and national trends in the use of detention and diversion for children who come into conflict with the law.
Informed by Foucault's treatise on surveillance and the phenomenological work of Casey, this paper extends the current clinical data by examining the architecture and location of detention centres, and the complex relationships between space, place and mental health.
The CQC data along with data published by the NHS Information Centre and independent researchers, all point to higher rates of detention for some ethnic groups, yet these differences are still not being tackled.
For the main outcome variables of detention and admission by 12 months follow-up, comparisons were made between those patients with missing data (n = 44 for detention outcome and n = 19 for admission outcome) and those with data available (n = 630 for detention outcome and n = 655 for admission outcome) for basic social and clinical factors.
