How I Chose Criminal Psychology

  Have you ever wondered how you got to the place you're at? What did you see, hear, or experience that caused you to find interest in something? For me, it was reading.

 I've always loved reading, but never truly knew which books resonated the most with me. Sometimes I wouldn't be able to make it halfway through a book before I lost interest. Freshman year of high school, I bought a book called "Suicide Notes" by Michael Thomas Ford. While reading this book about a teenage boy's experience in a mental rehabilitation center, I discovered my deep interest in psychology and mental disorders and their effects on the mental wellbeing and survival of individuals. From then on, I was in the bookstore every few weeks to find a new book about different mental disorders or traumatic events.

 I then stumbled upon "Stolen" by Lucy Christopher. This novel following a fictional story of a young girl being stalked and later kidnapped by a man in the airport, reveals the development of Stockholm Syndrome. This was my first step into the direction of criminal psychology and its effects on everyone involved. This girl and her kidnapper seem to develop a real relationship and causes her to question everything about her family's relationship and their love for her, later leading to her wanting to defend her kidnapper to his prosecutors.

 After discovering my passionate interest in this topic and in-depth research, I realized the reality of mental health problems that incarcerated people deal with and even develop while serving time. Through this realization, I then noticed the amount of people who return to prison after their first offense. It's also important to note that there are more people with mental illensses in prisons in America than in mental institutions. This caused me to ask the question- what psychological help do these people receive before they must attempt to readjust to the normal world while still being expected to not commit further offenses?

 This leads me to my most recent conclusion, being that my main goal I'm striving to accomplish in my career is to provide intentional outlets to incarcerated people both during and after prison to reduce the rates of recidivism and ease into readjustment.

 In all, reading led me to discover my interest in psychology and choosing that as my major in order to focus on the mental health of people convicted of crimes to ultimately implement things into the system to prevent recidivism. 

 Make sure to take care of your mental health as well as check on the people around you, mental health matters!