Personality Disorder and Psychopathy as Predictors of Psychosocial and Criminological Outcome in Mentally Disordered Offenders

Abstract

Ninety-five patients discharged from a specialist Personality Disorder (PD) service were prospectively assessed for Axis II disorders and Psychopathy. Sequential regression models tested the ability of different conceptual definitions of PD and Psychopathy to predict criminological and psychosocial outcome over a mean follow-up of 4.16 years. Trait definitions of PD modestly predicted criminological outcome. After controlling for age, IQ and PD, time to first reconviction after entering the community was predicted by PCL-R Factors 1, 2, and previous convictions. Psychosocial outcome was predicted by PCL-R with high scores on the affective-interpersonal Factor 1 providing strongest prediction of poor psychosocial outcome.

Keywords:

• personality disorder
• psychopathy
• assessment
• diagnosis
• psychosocial
• criminological
• outcome

Acknowledgments

The study was supported by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the Nottingham Research Ethics Committee and the National Information Governance Board, to collect patient identifiable data without patient consent, under Section 251 of the NHS Act (2006). These permissions enabled complete follow-up data to be obtained for all of the patients in the series.The authors would like to thank all the staff in the PD service at Arnold Lodge, especially Beckie Agami and Michael Baliousis, who contributed to the assessment data used in this investigation.