Prevalence of mental disorders among sexual offenders and non-sexual offenders

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the prevalence of mental disorders in convicted sex offenders admitted to the Psychiatric Custody and Treatment Hospital (Forensic Psychiatric Facility). METHOD: 89 patient records of males admitted from March 2005 to August 2006 were analyzed. The analysis included evaluation of two study groups: Group I comprised subjects who had committed sex offenses (sexual offenders) while Group II contained subjects convicted for other crimes (non-sexual offenders). Variables studied were: age bracket, years of schooling, marital status, skin color, place of birth, previous psychiatric admissions and psychiatric diagnosis. RESULTS: Mental retardation and personality disorders were the mainly diagnoses in Group I (sexual offenders) (61,76% and 29,41% respectively). In the other hand, schizophrenic subjects predominated in Group II (non-sexual offenders) (82,93%). CONCLUSION: Different from international data, we have found low prevalence of personality disorders among Brazilian forensic population and we believe that it's due to a distinguishing characteristic of the Brazilian legal system, which does not consider personality disorder a mental disease, thus, not prompting these patients to civil commitment.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Achá,Maria Fernanda Faria, Rigonatti,Sérgio Paulo, Saffi,Fabiana, Barros,Daniel Martins de, Serafim,Antônio de Pádua
Format:	Digital revista
Language:	English
Published:	Instituto de Psiquiatria da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro 2011
Online Access:	http://old.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0047-20852011000100003
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