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PROJECT TOPIC: LONELINESS SOCIAL SUPPORT AND COPING AS PREDICTORS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL WELLBEING AMONG ENUGU PRISONS IN MATES

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Imprisonment is by all accounts seems to be an unpleasant experience wherever in the world it takes place. According to Sykes (2006) life in the prisons is a punishing and painful experience.  Prisoners experience high levels of emotional stress as a result of emotional withdrawal and depression (Herreveld, Van Der Plight, Claassen & Van Dijik, 2007). For some prisoners, incarceration is so stark and psychologically painful that it represents a form of traumatic stress severe enough to produce post-traumatic stress reactions after their release (Rokach, 2007). Research on the health status of prisons inmates has had a long history and has revealed a number of findings indicating that inmates generally experience poorer health than the general population (Cooper & Livingstone, 1991). Majority of the researchers concluded that imprisonment has negative psychological and physical effects on the inmates’ well-being leading to psychological deterioration.

Well-being is a potential parameter of overall health and good life of every person (Seligman & Csikzentmihalyi, 2000). The good life refers to the factors that contribute most to a well lived life. They are positive social relationships, ability to cope in stressful environment, wisdom, sense of meaning and purpose in life (Diener, 2009; Myers, 1992). Well-being is also seen as a contentment and satisfaction (in the past), flow of happiness (in the present) and hope, optimism (for the future) (Carr, 2004). The role of individual’s adaptability, social support networks and connections are fundamental factors to achieving prisoner’s health and psychological well-being (Herreveld, Van Der Plight, Claassen & Van Dijik, 2007).

The definition of health is critical to the debate over prisoners’ health. World Health Organization (WHO) (1996) defined health as a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. World Health Organization (WHO) (1996) argues that health is created by caring for oneself and others, being able to take decisions and have control over one’s life circumstances, and ensuring that the society one lives in creates the conditions that allows for the attainment of health by all its members. According to WHO poor health is typically regarded as a manifestation of a breakdown in harmony between the individual and the wider environment.

Psychological well-being however, is the ability of an individual to live and function at a high level of behavioural, emotional, physical adjustment and adaptiveness even in the presence of stress. It denotes the extent to which a person is living a life characterized by happiness, satisfaction and hopefulness. Psychological well-being according to De Viggiani (2007) Visser and Routhledge (2007) is a good or satisfactory condition of existence characterized by health in which an individual can function psychologically well enough to realize his or her potentials and the ability of feeling good and functioning effectively. As such, psychological well-being designates one who is functioning at a high level of behavioural and emotional adjustment and adaptiveness and not one who is simply not ill. Some literature in health psychology has demonstrated the fact that the association between health status and well-being seems intuitively clear based on mind-body relationships, and that the presence of illness can be negatively correlated with the experience of psychological well-being (Compton, 2005; Shuker & Newton, 2008; Weiten, Dunn & Hammer, 2011).


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