14 DAY TRIAL // Mental disorder patients have been observed to be more aggressive than healthy patients for a long time, but the exact mechanisms that trigger this type of behavior haven't been fully researched until now. Schizophrenia patients are, out of all others, especially prone to committing violent crimes, and a new study, published in the May 20th issue of the scientific journal JAMA, comes to show that existing drug abuse may play a fundamental role in shaping this type of behavior.
Previous studies have already determined that major mental disorders are associated with increased risks of the patients turning violent on those around them. Special attention was given during these studies to the effects of schizophrenia on the human mind. “These reports typically find that schizophrenia is related to a 4- to 6-fold increased risk of violent behavior, which has led to the view that schizophrenia and other major mental disorders are preventable causes of violence and violent crime,” the researchers explain in the new JAMA paper.
“We demonstrate that the risk of violent crime in schizophrenia in patients without comorbid substance abuse is only slightly increased. In contrast, the risk is substantially increased among patients with comorbidity and suggests that current practice for violence risk assessment and management in schizophrenia may need review,” they add about the conclusions they drew from their latest investigation.
The research was conducted by University of Oxford Warneford Hospital expert Seena Fazel, M.D., who led a team of colleagues in analyzing data they retrieved from the Swedish registers of hospital admissions and criminal convictions, spanning a fairly large time-frame, between 1973 and 2006. The team took into account factors like age, gender, income, and marital or immigrant status, as well as triggers such as substance abuse, or the incidence of violent behavior among siblings of those in the actual study.
The results revealed that 13.2 percent of all schizophrenia patients had a history of at least one violent offense, as opposed to the general population average, where only 5.3 percent of people broke the law, or committed violent crimes against other individuals. From the mentally distressed patients, those who did not have a history of drug abuse, about 8.5 percent, were less likely to express their aggressive behavior than those who had such a history, some 27.6 percent.
However, the researchers also noted that the crime rates between drug-abusing schizophrenics and their siblings were relatively the same, which seems to hint at the fact that a host of underlying genetic factors may also play an important role in the development of aggressive behavior, in addition to the drug abuse.