Comparison of depression, anxiety, general mental health and selfesteem among prisoners in consultancy and ordinary wings

Introduction: the prison environment is a potential major stressful factor in formation or aggravation of mentalproblems so this study aimed to evaluate the mental health indexes among prisoners in consultancy and ordinary wings ofcentral mashhad jail.materials and methods: all of the prisoners in the ordinary and counseling wings of mashhad jail in 2012 comprise thestatistical community of this descriptive study. 300 prisoners (equally number among prisoners who jail in ordinary andcounseling wings) selected randomly. research instruments include: beck depression inventory-ii, beck anxietyinventory, general health questionnaire, coopersmith self-esteem inventory and personal characteristics form. dataanalyzed by descriptive and analytical statistic indexes (comparison of independent means, variants analysis andregression analysis) and spss software.results: the anxiety and depression levels are lower among counseling group significantly (p<0.001) and this group hadhigher levels of general mental health and self-esteem (p<0.001). self-esteem was the only variable that had a positiverelation with the type of crime. inmates charged with theft and disorderly conduct had a higher level of self-esteem thanothers.conclusion: according to the findings of the present study, it seems that the counseling interventions in jails canimprove the mental health indexes such as depression, anxiety, general mental health and self-esteem among prisoners