The state of health care provision and extent of mental health in the prisons of the Arab world: A literature review and commentary

Relevant literature was searched using MEDLINE, PsycINFO and Google in addition to Arabic search engines for information. Due to the shortage of scholarly articles on the subject, we broadened our search to publications from human rights organisation and articles in the mainstream press. We estimated the total carceral population in the member countries of the Arab league at 338,500 prisoners, over 46,000 of whom could be suffering from severe mental illness. We relied on indirect indicators of mental health services such as the quality of medical care in general, accounts of prison conditions by prisoners and their families, and the abundant literature on human rights abuses. Despite a grim overall picture, we highlight signs of improvement in recent years. Psychiatrists working in Arabic prisons face a number of challenges.We comment on directions for the future in the field of correctional psychiatry in the Arab countries including from the perspective of research.