Symptom Profile and Criminal Behavior among Inpatient

Abstract

Psychological criminal behaviour that refers to actions that may be rewarding to the actor but inflict pain or loss on others - it is criminal behaviour that is anti-social behaviour (Andrew and Bonta, 1998). Criminal behavior and violent crimes present many social, legal and clinical problems. In the past 25 years, numerous studies have shown a moderate albeit statistically significant association between major mental disorders, criminal behaviour and violent crimes (Fazel and Grann, 2004). It is well established that people in correctional and forensic mental health settings have higher rates of personality disorder, especially antisocial personality disorder, than people in the general community (Fazel and Danesh, 2002). The aim of current study is to determine the relation between schizophrenia, mood disorders, dual diagnosis and substance use disorder diagnoses and criminal behavior, highlighting the correlation between personality traits and criminal behaviour. The researcher interviewed 100 psychiatric patients from the inpatient ward (after a written informed consent)who met the DSM-IV diagnosis of mental disorders, criteria included for patients were set as age varying from 18 to 60, gender including males and females, with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, mood disorders, dual diagnosis and substance use disorders according to the DSM-IV diagnostic classification, the patients were divided into 25 patients for each diagnosis. Patients who were excluded were those having concomitant non psychiatric illness that could have cause violence or enduring personality changes. Tools used were socio-demographic data sheet, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) (First et al., 1994), it was translated to Arabic version and was validated (Shaker et al., 2003), which was developed to provide broad coverage of psychiatric diagnoses according to DSM-IV, the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID-II) (First et al., 1997), it was translated to Arabic version and was validated (Hatata et al., 2004), a designed clinical forensic psychiatry sheet in Arabic language about the patients’ criminal history regarding the type of crime committed either adult or civil and the presence of substance intake around the time of crime action, and the Symptom Check List -90-R (Derogatis and Savitz, 2000), the Arabic validated version of symptom check list -90-R questionnaire was used (El-Behairy, 2005), which is a self -rating psychometric questionnaire to screen mental health symptoms.