Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health最新文献

Background

A substantial number of police–citizen interactions involve a civilian presenting in a mental health crisis, often with law enforcement as the first point of contact. Traditional training methods offer minimal opportunity for police to practice navigating such civilian interactions or to develop and strengthen relevant skills. Virtual reality (VR) offers a promising avenue for addressing this gap by immersing police officers in realistic, controlled environments that could help them to acclimatise to these encounters and understand their own reactions to them.

Aims

To examine the extent to which law enforcement officers become immersed in a virtual training environment (VTE), to assess their empathy and sympathy towards a non-player character (NPC) presenting with schizophrenic psychosis and how empathy and sympathy relate to virtual immersion.

Methods

Forty police officers—about a fifth of the department approached—participated in a VR mental health training scenario. Officers' immersion in the VTE was assessed using a 28-item Presence Questionnaire and their empathy and sympathy were measured using adapted standard scales. The study employed Fisher's Exact Test and Spearman's correlation to analyse the relationships between immersion, empathy and sympathy.

Results

Most officers experienced good levels of immersion, although nearly half felt confused or disoriented at the beginning of the session. Officers reported moderate levels of sympathy and higher empathy towards a non-player character. Significant correlations were found between specific aspects of immersion (e.g. sensory engagement) and empathy. Fisher's Exact Test revealed strong associations between physical interactions in the VTE and empathy/sympathy.

Conclusions

Our findings show that police are willing and able to engage in a VR exercise to learn about their response to people in a mental health crisis and that, in such circumstances, they can be both sympathetic and empathic. Next steps will be exploration of the value of such a tool to enhance real-life responding.

Background

Extended stays in specialist secure hospital units raise ethical concerns. While this topic has been investigated in various countries, there has been little research on it in France.

Aims

We aimed to study the length of stay of patients in the Henri Colin unit, a secure hospital unit in the Paris area and test relationships between length of stay and sociodemographic, clinical and legal features.

Methods

In this records-based retrospective study, we included all 60 inpatients on a census day just prior to the pandemic. We chose a 2-year threshold to define long stay status.

Results

Mean length of stay was just in the long-stay range (756.7 days, SD 1071.2). Over a quarter (17, 28%) of the patients had been hospitalised for more than 2 years and 5 (8%) patients for more than 5 years. In multivariate analysis, legal status and need for seclusion during stay were significantly associated with long-stay status. These results are consistent with international literature, especially as they show the significant interplay between legal and medical aspects in the patients' care pathway.

Conclusion

As the first such study in a specialist medium security hospital unit in France, this study adds to the international evidence on the complexities surrounding extended stays in secure units and underscores the importance of addressing both clinical and legal aspects in the treatment of patients with mental disorders in these settings.

Background

Whilst there is increasing recognition and interest in how staff who have neurodivergence are represented and contribute to industry, to date, there has been very little exploration of neurodivergence among healthcare staff and none with those working in forensic psychiatric services.

Aims

To estimate the prevalence of neurodivergence among staff working in a UK high-secure psychiatric hospital and explore their experiences.

Methods

All staff were invited to complete a confidential online self-report questionnaire consisting of both closed and open questions.

Results

A fifth of the staff responded (n = 124), but two did not report their neurodivergent status, so were excluded. Nearly 40% of responders reported having some form of neurodivergence, with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) being the most common, followed by dyslexia, autism and dyspraxia. Over a third (36%) of those reporting neurodivergence said that they had chosen not to disclose this to the organisation and around a quarter (23%) reported not feeling valued or supported by the organisation. Of the staff cohort who responded, most expressed the view that neurodiversity in the workforce is beneficial to patient care, despite the majority being unsure whether neurodivergence is an advantage or a barrier for the individual themselves. Over half of staff completing the survey felt there was not enough awareness of neurodiversity among staff and that more training on the subject would be beneficial.

Conclusion

This survey suggests gaps in our recognition and understanding of neurodivergence among hospital staff. Although the prevalence figure should be treated with caution, given the low response rate, in this first survey of neurodivergence among staff in a secure hospital, our findings suggest substantial numbers of staff with neurodivergence and the likelihood that neither they nor the organisation are optimising this situation. The further steps should include the development and evaluation of strategies exploring ways of improving recognition and relevant support for staff, as well as discovering ways in which neurodivergence in staff might inform and optimise care and treatment for patients.

Background

Studies of mattering and delinquency among young people have, to date, focused solely on whether teenagers think that they matter to each other. No one has yet examined the extent to which young people think that they matter to society generally and how this relates to delinquency.

Aims

To explore relationships between young peoples' sense of being of value to society and their delinquent intentions. First, we tested relationships between such ‘societal mattering’ scores and delinquent intentions; secondly, we tested self-rated attitudes towards the criminal justice system and associating with delinquent peers as possible mediators of any relationship.

Methods

Four hundred and twenty-eight 10- to 21-year-olds were recruited by social media, flyers or in one school in France. They were asked to complete a schedule online, in private, first rating themselves on a five-point Likert scale according to the statement ‘I feel like I matter in society’. They were then asked to rate the frequency and variety of their own delinquency and delinquent intentions, then the extent to which they related to peers with positive or negative attitudes towards the law and its representatives and their own attitudes towards the criminal justice system.

Results

Under one in three of these young people felt that they mattered in society. Regression analyses showed that lower sense of such mattering was associated with delinquent intentions, even after controlling for own past delinquency, age and gender. Peers' attitudes and personal attitudes towards the justice system partially mediated this link.

Conclusion

Our findings add to literature on sense of place in society and criminal behaviours by showing, for the first time, that a sense of not mattering in society, or mattering little, is likely to be associated with delinquency. Although we recommend extending this study to international, population-based samples, we suggest school and community initiatives to ensure that young people do feel valued by society, which may contribute to community safety.

Very high rates of suicide and self-harm in prisons worldwide emphasise the need for evidence-based approaches to prevention. Real world evaluations of organisational changes and service developments within prisons could yield important insights, but there are challenges to achieving this, as we found from an evaluation in a single UK institution.

Background

People involved in the criminal justice system are at increased risk of recurring intimate partner violent (IPV) victimisation. Experience of trauma is linked to a variety of negative outcomes, including repeated experiences, so it is important to identify factors that may distinguish non-victims, single-event victims and recurring victims at an early stage as this could hold potential for intervention efforts. Research studies have identified individual-level risk factors for IPV victimisation but have not investigated psychopathy traits or sex differences.

Aims

To examine sex differences in psychopathy scores and later IPV victimisation.

Methods

Using the Pathways to Desistance study, a longitudinal study of 1354 adjudicated adolescent offenders, relationships between psychopathy checklist-youth version (PCL-YV) scores measured during the baseline wave, independent/control variables in wave 6 and self-reported IPV victimisation in wave 7 were explored using multinomial regression models.

Results

Among justice-involved young adults (average age 19), PCL-YV scores differentiated between non-victims, single-event victims and recurring victims. Higher total scores and higher ratings on the antisocial behaviours facet of psychopathy significantly increased the relative risk of recurring victimisation by an intimate partner overall, and specifically of emotional or physical intimate partner violence. For the young women but not the young men, a higher scoring on the interpersonal manipulation facet of psychopathy specifically increased the relative risk of being a recurring victim of any intimate partner violence.

Conclusions

Sex-specific differences in relationships between high PVL-YV scores and recurring IPV victimisation can be used to screen for risk of repeated trauma for justice-involved young adults, which may change a trajectory of continued involvement in the criminal justice system to a trajectory of resilience and recovery.

Background

Taken together, prior publications on the association between symptoms of depression and anxiety and contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) suggest a bi-directional relationship, but all the studies only focus on one direction in this relationship.

Aims

To examine, in longitudinally collected data, period-specific within-individual change in anxiety and depression measures preceding arrest measurement and, separately, following arrest measurement.

Methods

Data were obtained from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997, a nationally representative sample of people born between 1980 and 1984 and first interviewed between ages 12–17 and a publicly accessible database. Our focus was on data for the 11 years 2000–2010. Using whole sample data, we tested for a reciprocal association between depression and anxiety during each 2-year period and arrests during the following year, and vice versa, allowing for relatively fixed characteristics such as sex, age and socio-economic indicators. We used period-specific change modelling to test relationships.

Results

We found that within-individual increases in depression and anxiety scores over short periods (2-year periods) of time was associated with an increase in the number of arrests subsequent over the following year, consistently throughout the whole of the 10 years studies. The reciprocal association was also observed, albeit the magnitude of the effects was much smaller.

Conclusion

This study adds to the literature on the association between mental health and CJS contact by showing that they may be reciprocally associated. This suggests that facilitating co-working or even formal partnerships between community mental health services and justice-related services could be beneficial.

Background

Although the prevalence is unknown, psychopathy can be a possible co-occurring condition associated with autism especially among forensic populations. However, the relationship between these two conditions remains poorly understood.

Aims

To carry out a systematic review of the available literature exploring the relationship between autism and psychopathy.

Methods

A systematic literature review following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines using terms for autism and psychopathy to search the literature databases Scopus, Pubmed, Web of Science, ASSIA, APA Psych Info, Medline and EMBASE from 1980 to March 2024. For inclusion, we required that a recognised measure of autism and psychopathy or associated features of the latter had been used.

Results

Of the 4230 potential articles identified, 37 met the selection criteria. Insufficient and inconsistent methodologies for data pooling meant that a narrative analysis was used. Although there is some overlap, four broad themes emerged relating to (1) assessment and frequency of co-occurrence, (2) behavioural and neurophysiological expressions of empathy, (3) behavioural contagion effects, mirroring, mimicry and other linking mechanisms and (4) emotional face perception and theory of mind characteristics. Within these areas there are some specific differences between the two conditions. However, the research to date examining the relationship between autism and psychopathy has mostly been with children and males, carried out with non-clinical non-forensic populations, as well as using self-report measures and parental ratings. Prior research has also largely focused on looking for differences between these conditions rather than co-occurrence.

Conclusion

This review outlines a case for considering autism and psychopathy as distinct, but potentially co-occurring conditions and highlights the need for more research into how the two conditions interact with clinical populations. There also appears to be a need for guidelines on when and how to assess psychopathy with autistic individuals and a better understanding of the therapeutic needs and factors influencing the long-term outcomes of autistic individuals who may also present with co-occurring psychopathy.

Background

There is a substantial research literature on identifying risk and protective factors for violence perpetration. Substance use disorders have long been identified as constituting a significant predictor of violent behaviour. Psychopathy traits have also been similarly recognised, but inter-relationships between psychopathy traits, features of substance use disorders and violence have been little explored.

Aims

To determine the degree to which shared variance between substance dependence symptoms and violence, as indicated by criminal charges for violent offences, among jailed men can be explained by psychopathy traits.

Methods

Features of dependence on substances in three drug classes (alcohol, cannabis and cocaine) were assessed in a sample of 682 men in a county jail awaiting trial on criminal charges, many for violent offences. Statistical comparisons of zero-order and partial correlations tested whether accounting for psychopathy total and facet scores, assessed by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), affected associations between substance dependence symptoms and violent charges.

Results

Total PCL-R scores accounted for a significant proportion of the shared variance between the history of criminal charges for violence offences and lifetime substance dependence symptoms in all three drug classes. At the facet level, controlling for ratings on the interpersonal and modified antisocial facets reduced the association between criminal charges for violent offences and symptoms of cocaine dependence; controlling for ratings on a modified antisocial facet also attenuated links between alcohol and cannabis dependence symptoms and history of charges for violent offences.

Conclusion

These findings build on the sparse literature to date on the role of psychopathy traits on relationships between features of substance use disorders and violence. Given that the observed connection between substance dependence symptoms and charges for violent offences is partly accounted for by individual differences in psychopathy traits, it follows that effective treatment for those traits may be useful, perhaps essential to reducing links between features of some substance use disorders and violent offending.

Background

Previous research has consistently shown value in studying emotion processing with psychopathy, but the relative effect of aural and visual stimulation has hardly been considered.

Aims

Our aims were to (1) compare reaction time and self-rated valence ((un)pleasantness), arousal and sense of being dominated by affective sounds or visual images among offenders with and without psychopathy (=/>26) on the psychopathy check-list revised; (2) investigate any associations, controlling for social desirability and depression; (3) explore the possible mediating effect of criminogenic cognitions on any relationships between psychopathy and emotional responses to affective stimuli.

Methods

Professional educators invited all male offenders serving semi-open custody sentences in one prison to participate. After a semi structured interview to assess psychopathy, they self-reported on criminogenic cognition, depression and social desirability scales, before a computer task using standardised human and animal sounds and images. Using the self-assessment manikin, participants rated the emotional valence, arousal and dominance levels when pleasant, unpleasant and neutral sounds or images were presented.

Results

About one in three prisoners completed all the ratings—120 men, of mean age 38.8 years (SD = 11.06). All had shorter reaction times to sounds than images. Offenders with high affective-interpersonal factor scores rated all types of sounds as less pleasant. Men with high psychopathy scores took longer to respond to unpleasant images than those with lower scores. There was a positive relationship between psychopathy factors and criminogenic cognitions and the external locus of criminogenic cognitions mediated the relationship between psychopathy facets and emotional responses of valence to pleasant sounds.

Conclusion

Our findings confirm the potential importance of emotional reactions to sounds as well as images among men with psychopathy. Given the shorter reaction times to sounds, in real life sounds could prove more provocative than images. While only small differences emerged between men above and below the PCL-R threshold, indications from facet analyses suggest that further study of sound stimuli could enhance the understanding of emotional response differences to inform interventions. Future research in this area should focus on human-related stimuli and add alexithy