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Summary Forensic psychology
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SUMMARY FORENSIC AND LEGAL PSYCHOLOGYIN A NUTSHELL
LEARNING GOALS:
Case 1:
1. Are people with mental disorders more likely to commit a crime than people without mental disorders?
2. What factors contribute to the expression of violent behavior in the mentally ill?
3. How are people with mental disorders treated in different legal systems?
4. Are mentally ill people morally/legally responsible for their crimes?
Case 2:
1. What is infanticide, neonaticide and filicide?
2. Which psychopathology is related to those 3?
3. What role does postnatal depression play?
4. What can cause infanticide in the absence of psychopathology?
5. Are there differences between filicidal mothers and fathers?
6. How can we prevent infanticide, neonaticide and filicide?
Case 3:
1. What is paraphilia? What are different types, crimes, and causes/risk factors?
2. To what extend are pedophiles treatable?
3. What actions get you on the sex offender register?
4. Are there ways to measure in a lab if a person has a specific type of paraphilia?
5. How do different countries handle sex offenders?
6. How effective are the laws about recidivism? (Negative consequences for perpetrator and community)
Case 4:
1. How does sleep work?
a. In which phase does sleepwalking happen?
b. What are other types of sleep disorders?
2. How are sleep disorders related to violence?
3. Which factors can trigger sleep disorders?
4. What is the role of proximity?
5. Is this kind of violence sane or insane automatism? How about culpability?
6. How can you determine if sleep disorder was underlying an offence?
7. Is there a possibility to treat sleepwalking?
Case 5:
1. Do children lie? Why?
2. How does lying develop?
3. How can you detect lying?
4. What is credibility assessment?
a. What existing methods are there?
b. How successful are these methods? (Pros, cons, accuracy)
c. Which methods are used in practice?
d. How is it affected by coaching?
e. How do you detect coaching?
5. How do these assessments work?
a. What factors are being looked at in these assessments?
6. What factors influence credibility itself? (Certain factors make children more/less credible)
Case 6:
1. What is profiling?
2. How do you come up with a profile?
3. What are limitations and potentials of profiling? (Accuracy and usefulness)
4. What are different approaches to profiling?
a. What are the underlying assumptions?
b. What is the empirical evidence for these assumptions?
5. Why is it popular to profile?
, CASE 1: ALL THOSE VIOLENT LUNATICS!
ELBOGEN & JOHNSON (2009): LINK BETWEEN VIOLENCE AND MENTAL DISORDER
Longitudinal data set representative of the US population to clarify whether or how severe mental
illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and MDD lead to violent behavior.
Aim: using longitudinal data to examine (1) what risk factors prospectively predict violent
behavior; (2) whether severe mental disorders predict future violent behavior; and (3) how
different risk factors may predict different types of violence.
Method:
o Participants > 18 years.
o 2 waves:
Wave 1 from 2001-2003.
Wave 2 from 2004-2005
Results:
o Analysis showed that the incidence of violence was higher for people with severe mental
illness, but only significantly for those with co-occurring substance abuse and/or
dependence.
o Severe mental illness alone did not predict future violence: it was associated instead with
historical, clinical, dispositional, and contextual factors. Most of these factors were
endorsed more often by subjects with severe mental illness.
Conclusions:
o Several mental illnesses did not independently predict future violent behavior,
so this challenges the perceptions that mental illness is a leading cause of violence in the
general population.
o People with mental illness did report violence more often, largely because they showed
other factors associated with violence.
o No causal role of mental illness in violence.
Limitations: people were self-reporting Biased (especially in people with schizophrenia).
KINGSTON ET AL. (2016): RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MENTAL ILLNESS AND VIOLENCE IN A
MENTALLY DISORDERED OFFENDER SAMPLE
Psychopathological Theory of Criminal Behavior: untreated mental illness, particularly
schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders is a direct cause of criminal behavior.
There are 8 predictors of criminal behavior that reside within the individual or their immediate social
learning environment:
1. Criminal history
2. Pro-criminal companions
3. Pro-criminal attitudes
4. Antisocial personality pattern
5. Education/employment
6. Family/marital
7. Substance abuse
8. Leisure/recreation
These 8 risk factors were important predictors of general/violent recidivism among mentally ill
offenders, whereas clinical/mental health variables were not significant predictors.
Moderators between mental illness and violence:
1. History of violence
2. Age of onset (together with persistence of offending):
o Early start offenders: display early pattern of antisocial and criminal behavior that
commences prior to the onset of mental illness.
More exposed to criminogenic risk factors and are embedded in criminogenic
environments.
More diverse criminal activity, convicted for more nonviolent and violent crimes,
and have more problems with substance abuse.
Increased prevalence of antisocial personality disorder diagnoses, psychopathic
traits, history of prison infractions.
2
, o Late start offenders: present no history of criminal behavior prior to the onset of the
mental illness, but after the onset they have repeated episodes of criminal behavior.
Researched the relationship between mental illness and violence in a mentally disordered offender
sample. They evaluated criminogenic and psychopathological predictors.
Method:
o N = 121, offenders admitted to a facility for mentally ill offenders. (Max sentence of 2
years)
o Diagnoses were put into relevant categories: presence of SUD, schizophrenia or other
psychotic disorder, mood disorder, anxiety disorder, personality disorder.
Results:
o The four principal components cumulatively accounted for 68% of total variance:
hostility-agitation, thought disorder, anxiety-depression, and anergia (emotional
withdrawal).
o Psychopathological predictors were generally poor predictors of criminal behavior. The
only diagnostic categories that seemed to be meaningfully associated with criminal
recidivism were NSMDs and SUDs.
o SUD and dual diagnosis with SUD generated the highest number of significant positive
correlations with level of service need.
o Personality disorder and any dual diagnosis were associated with more serious criminal
histories and higher level of service scores, antisocial pattern, and negative companions.
o Dual diagnosis was associated with pro-criminal attitudes.
Recidivism: return to provincial correctional supervision on a new conviction within two years of the
completion of a provincial sentence to incarceration.
Axis-I disorder; mental health and substance use disorders.
Axis-II: personality disorders and mental retardation (intellectual development disorder).
VAN BUITENEN ET AL. (2020): DATA ON THE PREVALENCE OF MENTAL DISORDERS AND
COMORBIDITY
Aim: presenting data on the prevalence of mental disorders and comorbidity in a large sample
of mentally ill prisoners and exploring relationships between comorbid mental disorders by using
a network approach.
Method: cross-sectional study as a part of a prospective cohort study.
o N = 5.257 male incarcerated patients.
o Diagnoses were made by a psychologist and psychiatrist.
Results:
o Schizophrenia spectrum and substance-related disorders were most prevalent within this
sample (±57 and 43%).
o 57% was diagnosed with a comorbid disorder.
o 4 groups were found:
Substance use: largest group (±27%).
Cannabis and stimulus abuse disorders are connected to antisocial
personality disorder, and ADHD.
Impulsivity (13%): antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder,
ADHD, borderline personality disorder.
Poor social skills (13%): autism spectrum, cluster B and C personality disorders,
other personality disorders, paraphilia and pedophilia.
Disruptive behaviors (4%): intellectual disabilities, disruptive, impulse-control, and
conduct disorders.
o Psychotic disorders (30%) were considered as a separate group, because they were
unconnected to other disorders: schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders.
Could be that clinicians underdiagnose the comorbid disorders in people with
psychotic disorders.
Conclusions:
o Comorbid mental disorders can be described as connected networks. Underlying
attributes as well as direct influences of mental disorders on one another seem to be
affecting the presence of comorbidity.
o Comorbidity is not only influenced by latent constructs, but they can also be the result of
direct effects that various mental disorders impose on one another.
3
, Comorbidity is associated with more antisocial behavior, and it’s been suggested that psychiatric
patients with multiple disorders are at a higher risk of being incarcerated.
There might also be other connections that they didn’t cover in the network.
Cluster A personality disorder: paranoia, schizoid personality disorder, schizotypical personality
disorder.
Cluster B personality disorder: borderline, antisocial, narcissistic personality disorder.
Cluster C personality disorder: avoidant personality disorder, dependent personality disorder,
obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
SARIASLAN ET AL. (2020): RISK OF SUBJECTION TO VIOLENCE AND PERPETRATION OF
VIOLENCE IN PERSONS WITH PSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS IN SWEDEN
Estimated the associations of a wide range of psychiatric disorders with the risks of subjection to
violence and perpetration of violence (risk of being a victim/perpetrator).
Method:
o N = 250.419
o Longitudinal cohort study with 2 comparison groups (siblings and individuals of same
gender and age in the general population).
o All participants had psychiatric disorders, premorbid subjection to violence was
measured since birth.
Results:
o People with psychiatric disorders were 3-4x more likely than their siblings without
psychiatric disorders to have been subjected to violence or to have perpetrated violence
after the onset of their conditions.
o The diagnosis schizophrenia was not associated with subsequent subjection to violence
after accounting for comorbid substance use and personality disorders. It was
associated with the perpetration of violence.
o The risk of the outcome varied by specific psychiatric diagnosis, history of violence, and
familial risks.
o Clinical interventions may benefit from targeted approaches for the assessment and
management of risk violence in people with psychiatric disorders.
o There is a causal link between mental illness and violence. Opposite of all
the other articles.
The evidence for the causal link between psychopathology and violence is inconclusive. Nuanced
view.
MESSINA ET AL. (2019): DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE NETHERLANDS AND ITALY IN FORENSIC
PSYCHIATRIC EVALUATIONS OF DEFENDANTS
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