Nowhere Else to Go—Solitary Confinement as Mental Health Care

Morris and Izenberg discuss solitary confinement as mental health care. Solitary confinement, or the isolation of incarcerated people in housing that severely restricts out-of-cell time and other activities, is a controversial practice in jails and prisons. Placement into solitary confinement is associated with adverse health outcomes, including psychiatric distress, self-harm, and deterioration of physical well-being. Like incarceration broadly, solitary confinement disproportionately affects people from racial and ethnic minority populations, particularly Black people. For both its harms and racial inequities, long-term solitary confinement has attracted increasing scrutiny, yet even short periods of such confinement can be harmful.