Mental health interventions for individuals with serious mental illness in the criminal legal system: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Globally, individuals with mental illness get in contact with the law at a greater rate than the general population. The goal of this review was to identify and describe: (1) effectiveness of mental health interventions for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) who have criminal legal involvement; (2) additional outcomes targeted by these interventions; (3) settings/contexts where interventions were delivered; and (4) barriers and facilitating factors for implementing these interventions. METHODS: A systematic review was conducted to summarize the mental health treatment literature for individuals with serious mental illness with criminal legal involvement (i.e., bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depressive disorder). Searches were conducted using PsychINFO, Embase, ProQuest, PubMed, and Web of Science. Articles were eligible if they were intervention studies among criminal legal involved populations with a mental health primary outcome and provided description of the intervention. RESULTS: A total of 13 eligible studies were identified. Tested interventions were categorized as cognitive/behavioral, community-based, interpersonal (IPT), psychoeducational, or court-based. Studies that used IPT-based interventions reported clinically significant improvements in mental health symptoms and were also feasible and acceptable. Other interventions demonstrated positive trends favoring the mental health outcomes but did not show statistically and clinically significant changes. All studies reported treatment outcomes, with only 8 studies reporting both treatment and implementation outcomes. CONCLUSION: Our findings highlight a need for more mental health research in this population. Studies with randomized design, larger sample size and studies that utilize non-clinicians are needed.

Catalytic Urea Synthesis from Ammonium Carbamate Using a Copper(II) Complex: A Combined Experimental and Theoretical Study.

The synthesis of urea fertilizer is currently the largest CO2 conversion process by volume in the industry. In this process, ammonium carbamate is an intermediate en route to urea formation. We determined that the tetraammineaquacopper(II) sulfate complex, [Cu(NH3)4(OH2)]SO4, catalyzed the formation of urea from ammonium carbamate in an aqueous solution. A urea yield of up to 18 ± 6% was obtained at 120 °C after 15 h and in a high-pressure metal reactor. No significant urea formed without the catalyst. The urea product was characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), and quantitative 1H{13C} NMR analyses. The [Cu(NH3)4(OH2)]SO4 catalyst was then recovered at the end of the reaction in a 29% recovery yield, as verified by FT-IR, PXRD, and quantitative UV-vis spectroscopy. A precipitation method using CO2 was developed to recover and reuse 66 ± 3% of Cu(II). The catalysis mechanism was investigated by the density functional theory at the B3LYP/6-31G** level with an SMD continuum solvent model. We determined that the [Cu(NH3)4]2+ complex is likely an effective catalyst structure. The study of the catalysis mechanism suggests that the coordinated carbamate with [Cu(NH3)4]2+ is likely the starting point of the catalyzed reaction, and carbamic acid can be involved as a transient intermediate that facilitates the removal of an OH group. Our work has paved the way for the rational design of catalysts for urea synthesis from the greenhouse gas CO2.