Mental Health and Schizophrenia in Criminal Justice

Mental health and
Schizophrenia in Criminal justice

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY.................................................................................................................................2
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION
Schizophrenia is a mental illness categorised in class of psychotic disorder. The disorder
mainly characterised by hallucinations, delusions, low mood, and distorted thoughts.
Schizophrenic symptoms are mainly categorised into two types of symptoms that is, negative and
positive. Many researchers are working since a long time to find factors that may are responsible
to develop criminal and violent nature in schizophrenic patient. The fact that come in focus leads
to create an understanding that mostly schizophrenic patients are most vulnerable to substance
abuse due to tendency of self-medication in order to reduce the symptoms of psychosis (Bandara
and et. al., 2018, pp. 473). The substance abuse attributed to increase risk of violence behaviour
and criminality.
MAIN BODY
According to some statistical data, it has been found that 80% people diagnosed with
schizophrenia are not violent, but multiple studies have shown that the person who committed
crime have found at higher rates of schizophrenia. The National Institute of Mental Health shows
that the prevalence of minor violence by schizophrenic patients are 15%. While only 4%
prevalence of serious violence. So these figures forced to believe that the people should not
doubt the connection violent crimes with psychotic order (Tsimploulis and et. al., 2018, pp. 371).
One study has also found that the people with mental illness are generally involved in minor
nuisance activities rather than violent or serious crimes in compared to normal population. A
proper assessment of risk factors has been done by researchers and diagnosed by clinicians to
know the main reason behind aggressive behaviour. The studies have shown that the
neurological impairment, social burdens, substance use, and alcohol abuse are the main
contributing factors for the aggressive behaviour of mentally ill patients (Hachtel and et. al.,
2018, pp. 786). Another factor which observed to increase the risk of violent act among
schizophrenic patient includes acute psychotic symptoms. With acute symptomatology,
researchers estimated that some psychotic offenders are probably driven by delusions. Delusions
are the common psychopathological symptom of psychosis.
There were several hypothesis has made to explain the mechanism behind the nature of
mentally ill patients. Antipsychotic medications act by blocking D2(dopamine) receptors and
interfere with the transmission of neurotransmitters within the whole brain. So patients may
adopt for the abusive drugs to counteract the effect of antipsychotic drugs. Another reason to
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