Need for the assessment of dual diagnosis in prisons

Introduction: Data show that 92.5% of prison inmates report drug or alcohol use. In spite of this, only 2% of dual diagnosis research has been carried out in the prison context. Therefore, the aim of this descriptive cross-sectional study was to analyze the profiles of dual diagnosis in a Spanish prison and test the feasibility of two assessment instruments. Method: The sample was made up of 152 drug-addicts imprisoned in the Villabona Penitentiary Center (Asturias, Spain) who volunteered to be interviewed. The sixth version of the Addiction Severity Index and the International Neuropsychiatric Interview -MINI- were used for the assessment of inmates' psychopathological status and drug problems. Results: The results show that, in general, the offender's profile is: male, 34 years old, unmarried, with children and with an average time spent in prison of approximately five years. Only 4.5% of respondents did not use drugs at the time of the study. In the remainder, the most widely used substances are cocaine (37.6%), heroin (29.9%) and alcohol (10.8%), with 52.7% reporting having used drugs in the last month. With regard to psychopathological state, only 12.9% have no associated disorders, and the most prevalent symptoms correspond to antisocial personality disorder (65.6%), risk of suicide (45.2%), depression (35.9%) and anxiety (25.5%). Conclusion: The instruments proposed (ASI-6 and MINI) are feasible tools for detecting addiction severity and associated psychopathology in this context.