Assignment on Mental Disorder and Crime

Running head: MENTAL DISORDER AND CRIME
Mental Disorder and Crime
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MENTAL DISORDER AND CRIME1
Throughout the years, the courts and the medical community have sought to
understand the behaviour of certain individuals who seem to be involved in unlawful
behaviours and harm others incorrigibly. Both the terms “psychopathy” and “antisocial
personality disorder” are the constructs have generally been used for predicting the
dangerousness and recidivism (Venables, Hall & Patrick, 2014). At the same time, they are
also used in the process of excluding the patients from the treatment services. The latter has
recently started to develop as a treatment diagnosis or a development that is reflected within
the cognitive behaviour therapy as well as the metallisation base psychotherapy. With the
same, there are several behaviour characteristics of the antisocial personality disorder that are
being targeted by the different interventions at the settings of criminal justice. However, this
paper shall elaborate on discussing whether the terms “psychopathy” and “antisocial
personality disorder” reflect the same construct or whether they differ. On the basis of the
conclusion on the issue, this paper shall further explore the ways in which this affects the
treatment of criminal behaviour. All these are psychopathic traits that psychopaths often
possess.
According to Moreira et al. (2014), the term “psychopath” is used to refer to an
individual who presents some psychopathic traits. It can be defined as a mental disorder
where individuals manifest antisocial and immoral behaviours and demonstrate lack of ability
to develop meaningful relationships, extreme egocentricity and failure of learning from their
experiences. According to the triarchic model, there are different conceptions of psychopathy
that is focused on a total of three observable characteristics to different degrees (Drislane,
Patrick & Arsal, 2014). These three observable characteristics are boldness, dis-inhibition and
meanness. Boldness is all about having low fear, tolerance to stress and that of unfamiliarity,
high self-confidence and social assertiveness. Dis-inhibition is having poor impulse control
such as issues with foresight and planning, shortage of affect and urging control poor

MENTAL DISORDER AND CRIME2
behavioural restraints etc. Finally, meanness is all about having lack of empathy with others
and using cruelty for gaining empowerment.
As opined by Wygant et al. (2015), antisocial personality disorder refers to the
disorder that is related to some substantial impairment of individual. With the same, it has
some negative impact on the people who surround the affected individual. For instance,
children who grow up with a parent with antisocial personality disorder can damage their
mental health, entail neurological deficits and can even make them antisocial. According to
Anderson et al. (2014), the pathology of antisocial behaviours implies some traits such as
unreliability, deceitfulness, incapability to feel the guilt or to love and irresponsibility. It is
also to mention that Antisocial Personality Disorder is also sometimes called as “sociopathy”.
Tyrer, Reed and Crawford (2015) have termed the “disorder to be a challenging type of
personality disorder that is characterised by irresponsible, criminal and impulsive behaviour
in human beings”. They have low moral sense and conscience that is often apparent and at the
same time, have a long history of legal issues, crimes and aggressive behaviour.
It is to mention that psychopathy includes a broader range of behaviours and problems
as compared to the Antisocial Personality Disorder. Psychopathy is characterised by having
shortage of empathy and blunting of the other affective states. The detachment and
callousness of the psychopaths enable them to become highly manipulative (Salekin et al.,
2014). According to the researchers, psychopathy is one among the most difficult disorders
one can spot to have. Unlike the anti-socials, the psychopaths seem to be normal and
charming enough to attract anybody. However, underneath, they lack in conscience. Their
nature of being anti-social inclines them often towards crime.
Furthermore, according to Brownlee (2018), psychopaths spark the popular clinical
anguish and fascination. That is of the notion that the adult psychopathy is significantly