Psychosis & Violence

Forensic psychology involves the application of psychological knowledge, theory and skills to the understanding and functioning of the legal and criminal justice system. Among its many functions, is to cover areas related to the assessment and treatment of offenders. Also involved, is the assessment and treatment of mentally abnormal offenders, as well as the legal aspects of psychiatry. This includes knowledge of the law relating to psychiatric practice and issues of criminal responsibility. One of the areas that this discipline is currently addressing is violence in the mentally disordered. This essay will outline the role and contribution of forensic psychology in one particular set of mental disorders, namely psychoses and their relation to violence.

If the tabloid press and many movies were anything to go by, one would assume that anyone with a psychotic disorder was crazed murderer, with evil voices telling them to kill innocent people. This is of course a sensationalised view, and in actual fact, although many people believe that those with mental disorders are more likely to commit violent acts, results of research which indicates this are subject to conflicting interpretations, due to methodological, and other, issues. Some question forensic psychologists have still and are currently been trying to clarify in this area are; whether or not those with major mental disorders are any more likely to commit violent acts than those without, if psychosis is a risk factor, and how to predict which individuals in the mentally disordered population are at more at risk of becoming violent.

In a study of mentally disordered patients by Stedman et al (1998) comparisons were made with the general population, this yielded results which indicated that the abuse of substances was a key factor in violence in the mentally disordered sample. When he compared these results to the general population there was no distinction between prevalence of violence among the general