José Fernando Santos Almeida
Instituto Universitário da Maia, Portugal
Title: Crime, re-offense and substance abuse of patients with severe mental disorder
Biography
Biography: José Fernando Santos Almeida
Abstract
There are clinical variables related to severe violence by mentally ill as hostility, behavior infl uenced by the hallucinatory activity, grandiosity- with unrealistic belief of superiority, the delirious activity of suspicion/persecution and accelerated motor behavior hyperactivity, highly responsive to stimuli and hyperarousal or excessive instability. Other important factors to match, when we address violence committed by these patients are substance abuse, premorbid personality and ecological problems, namely, the quality of life in the family. Falk et al. concluded that persistent violence was associated with male gender, personality disorder, convicted of a violent crime before the age of 19, off enses related to drugs, non-violent crime, substance use and mental disorder. Th e decrease in consumption of substances is very important when we want to prevent criminal recidivism of these patients even when patients are set free after serving a safety measure for a crime they have committed. In order to prevent criminal recidivism when they were released, we implemented a psychiatric care intervention with these patients.
