The Alabama Department of Corrections has been ordered to report to a federal judge a list of prisoners with serious mental illnesses who were placed in segregation and the reason.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson issued the order Tuesday in response to an emergency request for a temporary restraining order by lawyers who represent inmates in a lawsuit over mental health care.

The emergency request came because of suicides in Alabama prisons, including nine last year and two already this year.

The lawyers asked Thompson to block the placement of mentally ill and high-risk inmates in individual cells.

Thompson did not grant that request but wrote in his order that it remains pending.

Thompson has previously found that placing mentally ill inmates in segregation, which includes individual and double cells away from the general inmate population, had contributed to a “skyrocketing number of suicides” because mentally ill inmates tend to have their conditions worsen in isolation.

The request for a temporary restraining order says there was one inmate suicide in Alabama in 2017, nine in 2016 and five in 2015. It says the rate of suicides in Alabama prisons last year was about two-and-a-half times the most recently reported national average rate.

Lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program and others represent the inmates..

Thompson ruled in 2017 that mental health care in prisons is “horrendously inadequate.” Among many issues in the ruling, Thompson cited the placement of prisoners with mental illness in segregation and the failure to adequately monitor prisoners at risk of suicides.

The Legislature boosted funding for prisons, partly in response to the need for more mental health staff. Lawyers for the inmates and the ADOC have been sparring in court over whether the state’s efforts have been adequate.