Interpersonal Stress on Criminal Violence (Essay Sample)

Rajiv Kattel
Eng 101
Date
An Assessment of the Association between Psychiatric Disorders and Interpersonal Stress on Criminal Violence
Introduction
Significant research that tries to study the effects of an individual’s psychological disorders and stresses on criminal activities has been undertaken and published in revered journals. The research has come in handy as various statistics from criminal correction facilities hammers down the point. There seems to be a well-defined relationship between the psychological disorders and stresses affecting a person and the actions they take which might be extremely violent in some situations leading to criminal violence.
This paper explores five articles that were published on the research that was undertaken on the association between psychological disorders and crime and vice versa. These articles vary in methods of conducting research within the population but end up with similar conclusions on the effects of psychological disorders and stresses on crime.[What are the specific stresses or effects on the potentiality of crime? You should be a bit more specific and list researchers’ names here or according to the varied conclusions.] In some dire situations people may end up committing suicide themselves. Some of the articles are conclusive on their research but some end up recommending further research to be undertaken.
Literature Review
In Angermeyer‘s (2002) article entitled “Schizophrenia and Violence” studied from a psychiatric and public health point of view the association between violence and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe illness that affects the brain. The disorder might lead severe brain damage. The symptoms of people with schizophrenia include hearing voices other people don’t hear, not making sense when they are talking and can sit for hours neither moving nor talking. People with the disorder are paranoid and may believe other people are plotting to commit harmful actions against them (Angermeyer, 2002).
Some of the causes of schizophrenia that have been put forward include genetic inheritance of the disorder, harmful environmental conditions such as exposure to viruses and the structure and chemistry of the brain. Angermeyer (2000) reviewed a series of epidemiological studies that had been published since 1990. There were large-scale epidemiological studies that had been carried in a number of developed countries in the western world hence reference material was available. The way in which the studies were conducted was methodologically sophisticated.
Most of the epidemiological studies reveal of the association between schizophrenia and violence. People with the schizophrenia disorder have a high risk of committing violent actions. Schizophrenia disorder people who have an addiction of substance abuse have a higher risk of engaging in violent actions. In addition, people suffering from schizophrenic disorder may have personality issues or disorders that may lead to them being violent. However, the number of crimes that may occur as a result of schizophrenia is minimal. A person may less be likely to be attacked by somebody with a severe mental illness than a person who is mentally stable and healthy. Risk reduction strategies are aimed at reducing the risk of being a victim of violent actions committed by a person who is suffering from schizophrenia.{Comment on the limitations of this research study too.]
In Dean’s et al. (2012), the objective of the article was to establish how a prone may be prone to victimization as a result of mental disorder.[Explain how this article differs from the last or what it adds to the discussion.] There was hard data available from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) which was used in the research. The data chosen by the researchers sought to examine the association between violent victimization and mental illness for persons aged forty six years. There was also an examination of the history of mental disorder for persons who were grouped into a cohort of ages twenty three, thirty three and forty two years. There were dependent variables that were factored in, such as the socio-economic status of an individual, income of a family, education, house ownership, excessive consumption of alcohol and financial strain.
There was a relatively low prevalence of victimization at fifteen percent for the cohort members. Nevertheless, the results still hammer down the point of a person being a victim of violent and cruel actions from people with mental instability. The persons aged 46 had significant acts that were associated with crime and violence, even after taking into account the dependent variables in the analysis (Dean’s et al., 2012). There was a history of mental disorder among the persons in the data sets chosen which has a correlation with criminal and violent victimization. The article provides sufficient evidence that the persons with a mental disorder condition have a high risk or chance of being victimized. Mental disorder has a direct correlation with violent victimization and persists even after adjusting for the dependent variables.[Again, express limitations on the research in terms of flaws in the studies or areas left unaddressed.]
In Hallqvist’s et al. (2006) article “Short-term effects of psychiatric symptoms and interpersonal stressors on criminal violence”, the primary motif was to analyze how psychiatric symptoms and mind stress can trigger a person to commit violence. The data was collected from an interview of one hundred and thirty three violent offenders that were recruited from a Forensic Psychiatric Evaluation (FPE) unit and a National Prison Evaluation Unit in Sweden in the period between two thousand and two and two thousand and three. The subjects were interviewed about trigger exposures.
This was accomplished using the case-crossover design method which ensures the subject is an independent variable in the research and cannot be affected by other external factors (Hallqvist’s et al., 2006). Psychiatric symptoms include suicidal ideation which is having thoughts or plans of committing suicide, death wishes, hallucination, experiencing paranoia, delusions of grandeur, violent ideas or being malicious to one self. Psychiatric symptoms take place during acute periods. Interpersonal stressful events include acute conflicts, denial of care and housing problems that include homelessness, bad neighbors and disturbances. Psychiatric symptoms such as suicidal ideation or Para suicide, hallucinations, paranoia and acute conflicts increase the risk of person engaging in violence while violent ideation does not trigger violent activities that may lead to crime. The care-crossover design has proven to be a particularly useful tool in studying the triggers of violence as it is useful in getting rid of long-term elements that an individual depends upon.
In Grisso’s (2007) research article “Do Childhood Mental Disorders Cause Adult Crime?” the main objective was to put across the point that mental disorders can lead to criminal activities among young people and adolescents. [This study seems more connected to your overall question than the last, so I’d suggest reviewing it before the last one mentioned.] Grisso (2007) continues to argue that among the delinquent youths in secure juvenile facilities about a half to two thirds can be classified to have one or more mental disorders. The method used was sampling from a large group of youths and examining psychiatric disorder among children and the use of psychiatric services in eleven counties in North Carolina. The study was conducted by Copeland and colleagues at the Duke University Center for Developmental Epidemiology (Grisso, 2007). For the purposes of mental health policy, we would want to know the extent to which mental disorder in adolescence increases the risk of adult offending. Knowing that one half of arrested adults in this sample had a mental disorder between ages 9 and 16 does not tell us that, because many youths in this study who had childhood mental disorders were never arrested as adults. Epidemiologists have a method that takes the latter “negative” cases into account. “Population attributable risk” estimates the prevalence rate of a “disease” (in this study, arrest in young adulthood) based on prior “exposure” to a possible
cause (here, mental disorder before age 17). In this study, the population attributed risk estimate indicated that if adolescents never had mental disorders, the rate of being arrested in young adulthood would be reduced by about 15%–20%. [Further attribute this statistical conclusion to the authors through a parenthetical citation.] This does not mean that arrests of young adults could be reduced by 15%–20%. It means that youths with mental disorders at some point between ages 9 and 16 are at that much greater risk of offending as young adults than if they had not had those disorders. The results are most directly applicable to policies that seek protective interventions prior to adolescence in order to prevent exposure to mental disorders. What they say about treatment for adolescents who have mental disorders is ambiguous, however, because youths who receive treatment have already been “exposed” to a mental disorder, and successful treatment does not necessarily neutralize the residual effects on psychological development during exposure to the disorder. There is good evidence that certain types of community-based interventions for adolescent offenders with mental disorders can reduce the risk of delinquency during the remainder of adolescence. We can speculate that successful treatment during adolescence would reduce the risk of adult arrests as well, but the extent of th...