An Investigation Into The Relationship Between Prisoner’s Mental Health Status And Personality Characteristics And Social Support

This study used sampling survey, comparative method and other research methods, tostudy mental health status of prison staff, their personality characteristics, the present status ofsocial support for them and reasons and to study the relationship between the three by theself-assessment lists of symptom, the criminal personality inventory, understanding socialsupport scale, and thus put forward the proposal for them. The results as follows:1.The prison inmates of different ages differ from each other in terms of the dimensions ofdepression, extraversion, smartness and anxiety.2.There were not any significant differences between the prisoners of different maritalstatus in terms of the scores of their mental health, personality characteristics and socialsupport for them as well as not significant difference in terms of the total scores.3.There were significant differences between prisoners of different degrees of culture inthe scores of interpersonal relationship, terror sensitity.4.Prisoners of different regions differ from each other significantly in terms of the scoresof anxiety, psychopathy, smartness.5.Prisoners of different crime types differ from each other in the dimensions ofsubordinate and hostility.6.There were significant differences among different prisoners in terms of the scores ofdepression, hostility, support，other supporting dimensions.7.Prisoners of different times being in prisons differ from each other significantly in termsof the scores of anxiety, psychopathy, terror.8.The prisoners’ scores of mental health status are higher than the national norm of normaladult; The prisoners’ scores of personality characteristics, extroversion, intelligen, sympathy,impulsive, inferior are lower than the national norm of adult male prisoners, whereas theformer’s the scores of subordinate, alert, violence, abnormal mentality, criminal thinking arehigher than the national norm of adult male prisoners.9.The prisoners mental health status and personality characteristics of each dimension wassignificantly positively related with each dimension; The prisoners’ mental health status andsocial support shared a significantly negative correlation; The prisoners’ personality characteristics of intelligent, affiliate, impulsive, inferiority, abnormal psychological weresignificantly negative correlated with social support.10.The prisoners’ personality traits, social support has a predictive effect for their mentalhealth status.11.The social support realized by the prisoners is the intermediary variable of personalitycharacteristics and mental health status.The prisoners mental health status through personality characteristics and social supporthave an effect, future longitudinal studies should be combined with qualitative researchmethods to better understand the mental health of prisoners.