Can Trauma Trigger Violent Crime in Mentally Ill?
Short-term risk was heightened in healthy people, but was higher in those with psychosis, study contends
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
By Karen Pallarito
People with serious mental illness who are victims of violence or exposed to stressful events are more likely to engage in a violent crime in the week following the trauma, a new study contends.
Stressful experiences also affect people without psychiatric disorders, but not to the same extent, the researchers said.
Some stressful events -- such as being violently victimized, injured in an accident, losing one's parents or self-harming -- act as "triggers," said study co-author Dr. Seena Fazel. He is a professor of forensic psychiatry at the University of Oxford in England.
Experiencing one of these events increases the risk of committing a violent criminal act within a week of the trigger, especially in people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Fazel said.
People diagnosed with these conditions have higher rates of criminal convictions than the general population, according to the study. Identifying triggers for violence "is potentially clinically important for risk assessment," the study authors wrote.
But Dr. J. Wesley Boyd, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said people with mental illness are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime.
"I'm actually as much or more concerned about the trauma done to my patients by being exposed to traumatic events," he said.
Read the full article at HealthDay News