•• Take all necessary measures to involve patients in the provision of health- care services to them by properly informing them about the services to be rendered; ensure prisoner access to health protection information, including information related to preventative health care PROPOSAL TO THE PARLIAMENT: •• Amend Article 24(2) of the Code of Imprisonment cancelling a provision, which states that a medical account of a prisoner’s mandatory medical examination carried out on admission must be kept in the prisoner’s personal (non-medical) file. 2.5.6.  MENTAL HEALTH, DRUG ADDICTION AND SUICIDE PREVENTION IN THE PENITENTIARY SYSTEM 2.5.6.1.  MENTAL HEALTH Care for mental well-being of prisoners is one of the serious challenges for the penitentiary healthcare system. According to the information received from the Ministry of Corrections, 2,020 prisoners have mental health problems, which figure makes 4.7% of all of the sickness cases revealed. Since prevalence of mental illnesses in penitentiary institutions equals roughly 70% according to the international statistical data, the low figure of 4.7% might be an indication of insufficient identification of cases of mental illness. In 2013, the prevalence rate of mental illnesses was 6.6%, which is by 1.9% higher than the analogous index for 2014. However, it is in the interests of fairness to say that there was a substantial improvement in revealing mental illnesses in October, November and December 2014. As the prison healthcare personnel have explained, a psychiatrist gets a list of prisoners wishing to get an appointment with the psychiatrist from the primary healthcare doctors. The primary healthcare doctors, however, refuse to put some prisoners on the appointment list because they think the prisoners are malingerers. We believe, because of the general depressing and unhealthy environment in the prisons, a psychiatrist’s services should readily be available in order to timely identify any psychic problems and timely provide adequate psychiatric assistance. Identification of prisoners with personality disorders is a matter of concern. Hence, it is crucial to improve access to psychiatric services as well as to deepen collaboration among prison psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers. These efforts should help improve the mental illness identification rate and provide adequate psychiatric assistance to mentally ill prisoners taking into account their individual needs. Patients suffering from acute psychosis should be treated not in penitentiary institutions but in psychiatric facilities. At the same time, adequate outpatient services will have to be made available. NATIONAL PREVENTIVE MECHANISM OF GEORGIA 109