The role of psychosocial treatment in decreasing of future violence behavior risk in forensicly treated psychiatric patients

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to establish to what extent psychosocial treatment as a part of complex, multicomponent forensic treatment has an influence on decreasing of the future violence behavior risk in population of forensic psychiatric patients. We examinated 13 patients treated on Department of Forensic Psychiatry of Psychiatric Hospital Rab in Rab, Croatia. 9 of them were males and 4 of them females, 25–60 years of age, all of them were compulsory hospitalized because of committed criminal act connected with violent behavior. All of them have diagnosis of schizophrenic group of diseases with different duration of forensic treatment (from few months to few years). During 2010. all of them participated in psychosocial programe workshops once a week, for 6 months.

Methods

Violence Risk Screening-10 (V-RISK-10), subjective measure of the programme chairmen performed in the beginning and in the end of the programme. The Aggression Questionnaire and Daily Spiritual Experience Scale as self-assesment scales were performed in the end of the programme. Results point on decreasing of V-RISK-10 results in the end of the programe in all participants. Interested observation was that mentioned results and those on self-assesment scales were not always been correlated positively. We also proved negative correlation between aggressivity and spirituality. As a conclusion, we have indications to believe that is real to expect that comining psychosocial treatment with targeted psuchopharmacological interventions could leed to decreasing the risk of future violent bihevior in forensicly treated psuchiatric patients.