Personality Dynamics Behind Bars: Improving Mental Health Services in a Correctional Facility

Mental health services provided in correctional facilities require improvement (Fazel et al., 2016). One strategy for improving care in these facilities may be to give consideration to a patient’s personality dynamics when planning interventions or interacting with the patient. Understanding a patient in the context of their personality dynamics can give members of a treatment team an increased ability to predict a patient’s experience of, and response to, different interventions, situations, and stimuli. This brief report identifies three treatment issues relevant to correctional settings and then uses clinical material from three cases to illustrate how conceptualizing each patient’s personality dynamics helped address these issues by facilitating more considerate and patient-centered interactions between staff and patient, assisting in the planning of behavioral interventions that were better suited for a patient’s personality, and by guiding approaches to building rapport and encouraging a patient’s engagement in their own treatment. These brief cases demonstrate the diverse utility of attending to each patient’s personality dynamics in correctional settings.