Mental health status and resilience of female prisoners with an interventional role of physical activity

Abstract

Imprisoned people have usually a poor health status in comparison with the general population. The aim is to exploring. The current study is an applied research and aimed to exploring the relationship between mental health and resilience of 99 women prisoners who participated in recreational sport classes. The data were collected through goldberg's general health questionnaire, with reliability (0.93) and connor-davidson resilience scale with reliability (0.97). Results showed that 59.6% of participants were aged between 20-25 years old and 67.7% of them were between 12 and 36 months in prison. Furthermore, the mental health status of female inmates was as great as possible, but their resilience was insufficient and low. No relation existed between prisoners' age and mental status but was observed a significant correlation between the resilience and age of them. On the other hand, significant difference was noted between mental health status and resilience of female inmates by type of crime, and a negative significant relation was also found between mental health status and resilience due to the amount of conviction. However we didn't found significant relationship between prisoners' mental health status and resilience in this study but many women prisoners suffer from mental disturbances and physical activity and sport recreational facilities along with psychological and psychiatric care in prisons can be a shortcut to managing these illnesses.