Increased prevalence of psychopathy and childhood trauma in homicide offenders with schizophrenia compared to nonviolent individuals with schizophrenia

firemonkey · August 26, 2019, 7:05pm

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Increased prevalence of psychopathy and childhood trauma in homicide offenders with schizophrenia compared to nonviolent individuals with schizophrenia.

KN Engelstad, BR Rund, B Lau, A Vaskinn and AK Torgalsbøen, Nordic journal of psychiatry, Aug 23 2019

Purpose: Schizophrenia is associated with an increased homicide risk. Personality pathology, particularly antisocial personality disorder and psychopathic traits, has been associated with increased violence risk in schizophrenia. Childhood trauma, more specifically physical abuse, has been associated with violence risk in healthy populations and in individuals with mental illness. It is, however, unclear how childhood trauma relates to homicide in schizophrenia. This is, to our knowledge, the first study to concurrently examine personality pathology and childhood trauma in a group consisting solely of homicide offenders with schizophrenia (HOS). HOS is compared to nonviolent participants with the same diagnosis (non-HOS). Additionally, currently assessed demographical and clinical characteristics of a Norwegian sample of HOS are reported. Materials and methods: Two groups of participants with schizophrenia were recruited in collaboration with in and outpatient clinics across Norway, HOS (n= 26) and non-HOS (n= 28). Assessments of personality pathology and childhood trauma were conducted, and information about clinical and demographical characteristics was registered. Results: HOS participants had significantly higher psychopathy scores, and more frequently reported moderate to severe childhood physical abuse than non-HOS participants. When simultaneously added to a logistic regression model, only psychopathy uniquely contributed to explaining group membership. Conclusions: Psychopathy and physical abuse was more prevalent among HOS participants compared to non-HOS, but only psychopathy independently predicted homicidal status. These results confirm the importance of including an evaluation of psychopathic traits in violence risk assessments of individuals with schizophrenia.

IIgr · August 26, 2019, 9:20pm

Hi, firemonkey! Just wanted to thank you for your job. I’m kind of addicted to the news that you are posting here.

Good job. Take care.

firemonkey · August 26, 2019, 11:20pm

I do my best , but special thank yous should also be given to @everhopeful and @twinklestars who are both great contributors to the news section .

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Increased prevalence of psychopathy and childhood trauma in homicide offenders with schizophrenia compared to nonviolent individuals with schizophrenia

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