Mental health care in Guyana’s jails before and after Independence

This article considers the intersecting geographical,social, medical and political frameworks necessaryto construct an understanding of mental health inGuyanese prisons, historically and in the presentday. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to integratearchives, modern records and interviews, it looks first atcolonial and independent state management of mentalhealth impacts with respect to sentencing, incarcera-tion and rehabilitation. It moves on to reflect on recentefforts to provide co-ordinated policies and practices atnational level to tackle more effectively moderate tosevere mental health conditions. Here it shows that,as in the colonial period, prisoners and prison officialsare typically neglected. Overall, our appreciation of theimportance of what we term the coloniality of incar-ceration and public health enables us to deepen anunderstanding of the development and ongoing signif-icance of approaches to mental ill health in the modernstate, following Guyana’s independence from colonialrule in 1966.