Dangerous or merely difficult? The new population of forensic mental hospitals.

Background: During recent decades, there has been a substantial increase in admissions to forensic mental hospitals in several European countries. It is not known if reforms implemented in mental health policies and practices are responsible for this development.

Objective: Our study examined the development of mental health care in Austria and the incidence and prevalence of mentally disordered offenders judged not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI).

Family and social influences on offending in men with schizophrenia.

Objective: Environmental influences have been reported to play a role in the genesis of both schizophrenia and violent behaviour.

Method: We studied the central features of the family and social influences of 103 healthy non-offenders, 103 non-schizophrenic offenders, 103 schizophrenic non-offenders, and 103 schizophrenic offenders, using a semistructured instrument.

Results: Lower social class of origin, offending behaviour in the parental generation, loss of the father, a new partnership of the remaining parent, growing up in blended families, larger sibships and stays in foster homes during childhood and adolescence, promoted the development of offending behaviour in general.

Predicting course and outcome in delusional psychoses.

Eighty-four of 90 patients with delusional syndromes of different nosological attribution underwent a 7-year follow-up. From 179 items covering the whole spectrum of psychiatric description of index examination, 20 were found to be statistically significant in predicting different aspects of course and outcome by stepwise discriminant analysis. Course and outcome were defined by 6 criteria (course of illness, course of delusion, development of deficiency, length of inpatient care, adequate activity and social adjustment) encompassing separate (but only partly independent) aspects of a disorder.