Violent women: a multicentre study into gender differences in forensic psychiatric patients

Abstract

To gain insight into the relatively small, but increasing group of women in forensic psychiatry, a retrospective multicentre study was started gathering information from the files of 275 female patients of four Dutch forensic psychiatric hospitals on characteristics and violence risk factors. Overall, a picture emerged of severely traumatized women with complex psychopathology with multiple previous treatment failures and many incidents during treatment. The present study investigates specific psychiatric and criminal characteristics of female patients by comparing their data to those of 275 male forensic psychiatric patients. Various prominent differences were found, for example, women had more complex histories of victimization, were more often diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, were more likely to commit homicide and arson and less likely to commit sexual offenses, and were more often involved in inpatient aggression than their male counterparts. Several recommendations for gender-responsive treatment and directions for future research are provided.

Keywords:

• violence
• women
• gender
• FAM
• risk assessment

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Gerjonne Akkerman-Bouwsema, Anouk Bohle, Nienke Epskamp, Susanne de Haas, Loes Hagenauw, Stéphanie Klein Tuente, Eva de Spa and Nienke Verstegen for their valuable help with coding the files.

Disclosure statement

No funding agency to be reported. Vivienne de Vogel is one of the authors of one of the tools described in the manuscript (the FAM) but receives no personal financial benefit of it.

Notes

1. More recently, this setting joined the collaboration and a study was started into female patients with mild intellectual disabilities.

2. In the first phase of the study, 17 of 297 female cases were removed from the analyses because the quality was judged below 50. In the second phase, the quality of five files of men was rated below 50 and they were excluded.