Do you people actually like the stuff you are listing, or are we to the point in the thread where we are just in a contest to name who has the most hours of content?
Direct Headline:
What Does Solitary Confinement Do To Your Mind?
When corrections officials talk about solitary confinement, they describe it as the prison within the prison, and for good reason. For 23 hours a day, inmates are kept inside a cell that is approximately 80 square feet, smaller than a typical horse stable. Cells are furnished with a bed, sink and toilet, but rarely much else. Food is delivered through a slot in the door, and each day inmates are allowed just one hour of exercise, in a cage..... Today, it’s not unusual for inmates to spend years at a time in solitary. Supporters say the practice helps keep prisons safe, but according to the medical literature, solitary confinement can also take a heavy mental toll....
..... Harlow also found that monkeys kept in isolation wound up “profoundly disturbed, given to staring blankly and rocking in place for long periods, circling their cages repetitively, and mutilating themselves.” Most readjusted eventually, but not those that had been caged the longest. “Twelve months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially,” Harlow found.....In one study, he found that roughly a third of solitary inmates were “actively psychotic and/or acutely suicidal.” Grassian has since concluded that solitary can cause a specific psychiatric syndrome, characterized by hallucinations; panic attacks; overt paranoia; diminished impulse control; hypersensitivity to external stimuli; and difficulties with thinking, concentration and memory. Some inmates lose the ability to maintain a state of alertness, while others develop crippling obsessions.....
Suicide is another major concern. In one study of California’s prison system, researchers found that from 1999 to 2004 prisoners in solitary confinement accounted for nearly half of all suicides. A 1995 study of the federal prison system found that 63 percent of suicides occurred among inmates locked in “special housing status,” such as solitary or in psychiatric seclusion cells....It’s tough. In a study of inmates at California’s Pelican Bay State Prison, psychologist Craig Haney found that prisoners “lose the ability to initiate or to control their own behavior, or to organize their own lives.” Haney, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, attributed this loss to the near total lack of control that prisoners have over their day-to-day lives in solitary.....Often time, he found, prisoners in solitary “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind — to organize their own lives around activity and purpose.” What results is chronic apathy, lethargy, depression and despair....
Jason M. Breslow APRIL 22, 2014
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/what-does-solitary-confinement-do-to-your-mind/
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I find it interesting that no one is evaluating the total psychological/mental/emotional impact of that kind of extended isolation. Of course, "most hours of content" matters.
A program that has found some success with long term inmates is to have them train dogs for those on the outside with special needs. It gives a carrot and a stick approach ( You need to have good behavior to qualify, you need to stay clean and have good behavior or the dog will be taken from you) It operates as something with "purpose". It gives the inmate some goals and responsibility. Also an inmate can't scam out or corrupt a dog. Just company and physical contact helps on an emotional level. Petting the dog. Walking the dog. Feeding the dog. Having the dog sit next to you. Just having dogs around has a calming effect on the perpetual tension in the overall "community" inside. People can focus on what's good for the dogs, not on their normal vices and interpersonal conflicts. One of the benefits of the program is the raw amount of compressed attention. An inmate can spend 18 hours a day training a dog, if it comes to that. What else are they going to do?
Francis Lawrence directed I Am Legend with Will Smith. Which was based on Richard Matheson's short story. In the book, Neville found a stray dog, but later it died. In the film, the dog was needed to allow Will Smith to have some dialogue and experience loss and to explain how he could BARELY cope for those years in isolation.
Audio books are the answer here. Full stop. Period. I have no idea what some of you are even talking about. The assorted filmography of James Hong? You are going to live in a cage for a year and no one is going to talk to you. Some people were surprised that Aaron Hernandez killed himself. I wasn't.
Some of you will say "It's Only A Year" Are you going to truly believe that completely after three months straight of living in a cage like an animal and watching the same episode of Bosom Buddies for the 50th time?