![Sample our Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5944/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Medicine-Dentistry-Nursing-Allied-Health.jpg"})
Abstract
Objectives
To investigate the effectiveness of treatments approaches in reducing the risk of reoffending in stalking perpetrators.
Design
A systematic search was conducted on Medline/Pubmed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus.
Setting
The United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Italy.
Participants
The analysis included 661 patients with stalking behaviour, 14 (2.1%) of whom were female.
Treatments
The evaluated treatments encompassed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT), Cognitive–Behavioral Anger Management Intervention, and the Duluth Model as comparison conditions. When pharmacotherapy was present, this, always associated with psychotherapy, was usually based on antipsychotics and mood stabilizers.
Results
We identified 35 studies from 3141 studies and 10 were included in the systematic review. Psychotherapeutic approaches proved to be effective in reducing recidivism rate, independently from the psychological model employed.
Conclusions
Psychological treatments seem to be effective in reducing stalking recidivism, despite further studies are warranted to better elucidate the most effective approaches to deal with this group of offenders, given the severe social repercussions associated with this phenomenon.
Disclosure statement
All authors declare to have no conflict of interest regarding this work.
Author contributions
E. Flutti and G. Parmigiani designed the study, E. Flutti and G. Moretti reviewed the selected papers and rated the risk of bias, E. Flutti, reviewed the literature and organized them. All authors drafted the article and critically reviewed it. All contributing authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.