NCJ Number
222992
Date Published
January 2004
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study investigated the relationship between psychopathy, according to the Dutch language version of Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R), and various types of disruptive behavior during inpatient forensic psychiatric treatment.
Abstract
Results of the study clearly indicate a relationship between PCL-R scores and disruptive behavior; high psychopathy patients were involved in significantly more incidents. More specifically, verbal aggression and violation of hospital rules were more characteristic of patients with high PCL-R scores than of patients with low PCL-R scores. In general, the findings are in line with earlier findings in forensic psychiatric patients supporting the value of the PCL-R as a significant correlate of disruptive behavior in forensic patients. In the past two decades, the relationship between psychopathy, as defined by the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) (1991) or its derivatives, and various forms of inpatient disruptive behavior, such as verbal aggression, physical violence, and escape attempts has been studied in a variety of samples of adult male prisoners and forensic psychiatric patients. Although past findings have been promising, more research is needed to study the predictive validity of the PCL-R with regard to inpatient disruptive behavior, especially among forensic psychiatric patients. In this study, the strength of the association was examined in a sample of Dutch forensic psychiatric patients. Tables, references