A Comparison of Psychiatrist Evaluation and Patient Symptom Report in a Jail Telepsychiatry Clinic

The effectiveness of a jail telepsychiatry service was evaluated by comparing psychiatrist and inmate report of psychopathology. Sixty-two inmates completed a total of 107 consultations at a rural county jail via interactive televideo. The inmates completed the Symptom Rating Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), and the psychiatrist completed a Psychiatrist Evaluation Form including the Clinical Global Impression Scale—Severity Index (CGI) after each tele-consultation. Most inmates were rated mild to moderately ill on the CGI. There was a sig-nificant, high correlation between telepsychiatrist evaluation on the CGI and inmate report of overall symptoms on the SCL-90-R [r(101) 0.35, p 0.05]. The findings support the ef-fectiveness of telepsychiatric evaluation for the jail population. The patterns of telepsychi-atric use in the county jail as well as future directions in this setting are described