Violence against a person : the role of mental disorder and abuse : a study of homicides and an analysis of criminality in a cohort of patients with schizophrenia

• Main Author: Lindqvist, Per
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Umeå universitet, Psykiatri 1989
• Subjects: Aggression; alcohol intoxication; alcoholism; family; follow-up studies; forensic psychiatry; homicide; mental disorder; schizophrenia; substance abuse; Psychiatry; Psykiatri; Northern Sweden
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-100574

Interpersonal violence is a matter of growing concern. Where the safety of the common man is concerned, the dangerousness of mental patients, the ongoing de-institutionalization within psychiatry, and the role of alcohol is disputed. In order to analyze the significance of abuse and mental disorder in violent behaviour, this subject was approached from two different perspectives; from a specific violent offence - homicide - examining the mental status of the offenders, and from individuals with a specific mental disorder - schizophrenia -and assessing the rate of criminal offence amongst them. Homicides in northern Sweden and in Stockholm, legally characterized as murder, manslaughter or assault and causing another’s death, and homicides followed by the offenders’ suicide, were studied. Medicolegal autopsy records, police reports, pretrial psychiatric reports and court records were collected and scrutinized. The criminal records of 644 persons, discharged from hospitals in Stockholm with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, were studied. The relative risk of criminal offence was analyzed by indirect standardization using the general population as a standard. Violent offenders were further examined from psychiatric records. In the homicide material, 16 females and 160 males killed 94 men, 78 women, and 15 children. Forty percent of all surviving offenders were abusers without a major mental disorder, 39% were mentally disordered, 11% committed suicide, and 10% were considered "normal". The abusers and their victims were older, often socially and mentally deteriorated, and well known to each other. The victim was the prime aggressor in half of the cases. Killings by mentally disordered persons and by those who committed suicide were characterized by intimacy between offender and victim; one third were also abusers. Multiple homicides and child murder were mainly seen among homicide-suicice cases. The "normal" offenders were more often of foreign origin and two thirds of the victims initiated the violence by physical ...