HRW: Prisoners With Mental Health Issues Kept in Wrong Conditions in France

Human Rights Watch criticized the potentially harmful conditions in which thousands of people with psychosocial disabilities are currently being kept in French prisons.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Thousands of people with psychosocial disabilities are currently being kept in French prisons in conditions that could harm them, without access to proper mental health care, a US-based human rights organization announced in a report Tuesday.

#France: Lack of care amounts to double punishment for prisoners w/psychosocial disabilities https://t.co/aNPfufEhQB pic.twitter.com/rGQxHEQsSo

— Bénédicte Jeannerod (@BenJeannerod) 5 апреля 2016 г.

​"Thousands of men and women detained in French prisons are estimated to have a psychosocial disability such as severe depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Yet they are held in conditions that do not accommodate their disability and can worsen their physical and mental health, and even put them at a heightened risk of suicide," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in the report.

The report added that some prisoners with the psychosocial disabilities were kept in overcrowded facilities, where they could be harmed because of their condition, while some of them, in contrary, were isolated and deprived of communications with other humans.

The report also included several recommendations to French officials, including the improvement of living conditions of the prisoners with psychosocial disabilities or provision them with adequate access to mental health care.