The Evaluation of Mental Health Screening Practices Within a Population of Incarcerated Women.

Screening for mental illness within prison populations is vital to the safety and well-being of prisoners and to the operation of an institution. Although prisons are currently mandated to screen for mental illness, there are no standardized methods for doing so. Some prisons use specialized mental health screening measures while others simply ask a few face-valid mental health-related questions. The current study examined the validity of the latter method within a population of female prisoners. Quickview questions, selected to serve as mental health screening questions, were compared with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2, a widely used forensic assessment measure. Results did not provide support for using the Quickview questions as a method for prison mental health screening. Implications and future directions are discussed.