Forensic psychology: Mental illness and Crime

?

Definitions of mental illness:

  • why do we need one? so that researchers can all agree and study the same relationships
  • Critical evaluation: how do differing definitions in the research affect our thinking. Very hard to make the relationship clear when clinicians are using different definitions of mental illness

Issues with definitions:

  • The law v Psychiatry & Psychology. Slightly different takes on what it means to be mentally ill
  • Sane v insane - back in the day either you were insane or sane 
  • Different diagnostic criteria - far more complex now. DSM and ICD: both very different, may have different mental illnesses in each and descriptions in each) even differences in the standardised manuals. Hard to come to an agreement 
  • "Crimanlity is a disease" you've got to be insnane to do what they do. It's a circular argument - self-reinforcing. Doesn't have the power to explain the relationship between crime and mental illness. We've made some progress, but we still have outdated ideas 
  • "monomaniacs" (no longer in technical use) a psychosis characterised by thoughts confined to one idea or group of ideas and "drapetomania" conjectural mental illlness that hypothesises as the cause of enslaved Africans fleeing captivity 
  • Circular arguments, PD's and older criteria for mental illness

Definition: difference between and illness and a disorder

  • Within axis 1 of the DSM IV; what they consider to be mental illnesses;
    • Scizophrenic disorders
    • paranoid disorders
    • mood disorders, including PTSD

Evidence for:

  • Schizophrenia: command hallucinations (a voice in their head that is commanding them to do something, so they go and commit the act because they've been told to do so). and paranoia (sometimes related to offending, lots of offenders don't understand their social world, don't undeerstand motives of people, label your behaviour as hostile. Their social cognition is poor, and if you add paranoia, they will react with aggression violence as they've misinterpretated their world) O'Kane, 2000
  • PTSD; hypervigilance, aggression (Briere 2000). Includes lots of things in DSM, don't have to be victim anymore, can just see or hear about them. People who have been through a traumatic event do it again for example those who have been in combat. Also seen in sexual offenders, victims of abuse as children, recreate the abusive situation right down the clothing, where it was done. Mirror image of when they were traumatised. Because they feel safe and secure from it, they are uncontrollable and unpredictable, if you recreate it. You are now in control. Doesn't work, they don't get over it. PTSD has correlates of trauma; tend to drink to escape, relationships become lonely, can become aggressive, hypervigiliant, become irresponsible. 
  • CE: do sufferers of the above tend to have other risk factors for crime?
  • Also need to look at what surrounds the mental illness to understand it 

Research/empirical evidence for

  • The public believe it, they think the relationship is very strong 
  • of 500 murders mental disorder = 44%, mental illness = 14%, previous psychiatric issues= 8%
  • mentally ill x3 representation in the CJS
  • Schizophrenic male patients more…

Comments

No comments have yet been made