Correlates of Violence in Patients with Schizophrenia.

Choi, Joonho; Park, Seon Cheol

doi:2015.18.1.10

Korean J Schizophr Res > Volume 18(1); 2015 > Article

Review Article

Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research 2015;18(1):10-15.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.16946/kjsr.2015.18.1.10 Published online April 30, 2015.

Correlates of Violence in Patients with Schizophrenia.

Joonho Choi, Seon Cheol Park

¹Department of Psychiatry, Hanyang University Guri Hospital, Guri, Korea. jchoi@hanyang.ac.kr
²Department of Psychiatry, Yong-In Mental Hospital, Yongin, Korea.

Abstract

Therapeutic social environments contribute to the successful treatment and rehabilitation for patients with schizophrenia. However, social stigmata of psychiatric disorder in our society have kept away schizophrenic patients from their recovery and adaptation. Many persons have thought that psychiatric patients are more violent and criminal because of overwhelming prejudice on untreated or mistreated patients with schizophrenia. The purpose of this review is to propose the new and updated fundamentals of our knowledge on the relationship between schizophrenia and violence. In 1980s, many researchers have a belief that rates of criminal behavior vary independently on the rates of mental disorders. The following scientific studies on various population and meta-analyses of relevant data, overall violence rate have been higher in patients with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders than in healthy controls. Even though schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders are associated with increased risk of homicide, the association has been not attributed to the psychopathology limited to schizophrenia. Most of all, co-occurrence of substance abuse has played an important role in increasing the possibility of violent behavior. The severe violent offending has been inclined to occur during the early period of psychotic episode before beginning the psychiatric treatment. Thus, most of the violent offending of schizophrenia patient can be prevented by prompt therapeutic interventions and treatments.

Key Words: Schizophrenia · Violence · Social stigma · Substance abuse · Homicide