Mental disorder and crime: Coincidence, correlation and cause

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature on the relationship between mental disorder and crime from 1997 and 1998. There is a brief examination of the importance of the topic and methodological challenges in researching the subject. Studies are divided between those that are designed to include a control, and which are therefore of greater use in establishing causality, and those that do not. The more specific that studies have been in comparing particular diagnosis and symptom clusters with specific criminal behaviour, the more useful they have been in establishing causality. An emerging theme is the importance of dual diagnosis, particularly substance misuse and psychosis, and violent crime.

Key Words:

• mental disorder
• crime
• violence
• substance misuse
• epidemiology
• prisons
• conduct disorder