The relationship between mental illness and violence in a mentally disordered offender sample: evaluating criminogenic and psychopathological predictors

ABSTRACT

The importance of mental illness as a risk factor for violence has been debated with significant implications for mental health policy and clinical practice. In offender samples, psychopathology tends to be unrelated to recidivism, although some researchers have noted that this relationship may be dependent upon certain moderating factors. In the present, prospective investigation, psychopathology is examined as predictors of recidivism in 121 provincially sentenced (i.e. less than 2 years) mentally disordered offenders. Results indicated that psychopathological predictors were generally poor predictors of recidivism in univariate and multivariate analyses. Consistent with our hypotheses, age of onset of criminal activity was a significant moderating factor on the relationship between mental illness and recidivism, although results were not in the expected direction for certain classes of mental illness. Results are discussed in the context of a social learning model of crime and in terms of the treatment of mentally disordered offenders.

KEYWORDS:

• Offender
• mental health
• diagnoses
• recidivism

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank Michael Seto for his comments on an earlier version of this paper.

Notes

1. Hodgins (2008) also described a third type of mentally disordered offender who shows a chronic course of illness with no aggressive behavior following the onset of the disorder. After one to two decades, these individuals engage in serious violent behavior (e.g. murder) that is generally directed toward those who care for them. Research suggests that this group is relatively small in number relative to the other two types.

2. We found an age 15 cutoff (as commonly reported in the literature) to establish early vs. late starters was quite limiting in this sample and did not discriminate recidivists from non-recidivists as accurately as any youth disposition vs. no youth disposition. In the present sample, any youth disposition (under age 18) was thus more informative than younger youth dispositions compared to all other dispositions.