Decriminalizing mental illness: specialized policing responses.

De-institutionalization of mental health patients has evolved, over nearly 3 generations now, to a status quo of mental health patients experiencing myriad contacts with first-responders, primarily police, in lieu of care. The current institutions in which these patients rotate through are psychiatric emergency units, emergency rooms, jails, and prisons. Although more police are now specially trained to respond to calls that involve mental health patients, the criminalization of persons with mental illness has been steadily increasing over the past several decades. There have also been deaths. The Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model fosters mental health acumen among first responders, and facilitates collaboration among first responders, mental health professionals, and mental health patients and their families. Here, we review some modern, large city configurations of CIT, the co-responder model, the mitigating effects of critically situated community-based programs, as well as barriers to the success of joint efforts to better address this pressing problem.

Inpatient aggression in community hospitals.

Physical violence is a frequent occurrence in acute community psychiatry units worldwide. Violent acts by patients cause many direct injuries and significantly degrade quality of care. The most accurate tools for predicting near-term violence on acute units rely on current clinical features rather than demographic risk factors. The efficacy of risk assessment strategies to lower incidence of violence on acute units is unknown. A range of behavioral and psychopharmacologic treatments have been shown to reduce violence among psychiatric inpatients.

The accuracy of risk assessment instruments in the prediction of impulsive versus predatory aggression.

Actuarial violence risk assessments, many of which include the construct of psychopathy, have been shown to be superior to clinical judgment in the prediction of long-term risk of community violence and recidivism. While these instruments initially appeared to provide similarly accurate judgments of risk of institutional aggression, recent research has indicated that such assessments may be less robust in this setting. One explanation may lie in the types of aggression most frequently observed in each setting. Impulsive (or reactive/affective) is the type of physical aggression most commonly exhibited in psychiatric facilities. This research examines the relationship between risk assessments and aggression in an inpatient forensic setting, with such aggression categorized as impulsive, predatory or psychotic aggression. Consistent with previous research, impulsive aggression was the most frequent type observed (58%). Anger (as measured by the Novaco Anger Scale) and clinical issues (as measured by the HCR-20) were most associated with impulsive aggression, with AUC values of .73 and .71 respectively. In contrast, anger and psychopathy (as measured by the PCL-R) were more associated with predatory aggression, with AUC values of .95 and .84 respectively. Psychotic symptoms were highly associated with psychotically motivated aggression (AUC=.90). These results suggest that traditional violence risk assessments may have limited utility in predicting aggression in an institutional setting and that psychiatric symptoms and heightened affect are more relevant.

The conditional release of insanity acquittees: three decades of decision-making.

The problem with the practical application of decision-making regarding release of mentally ill defenders lies in the inherently ambiguous definitions of mental illness and dangerousness, both of which are necessary for the continued commitment of insanity acquittees. In this study, we examined how clinicians make release decisions in a forensic facility, with particular attention paid to how such decision-making may have changed over time. Records were reviewed to determine documented criteria indicating readiness for release. The results indicated that compliance and treatment response were the primary reasons that the patients were judged ready for release. In addition, increasing attention to the use of substances as a risk factor was evident in the records, with substantially more documentation found in the most recent decade. Our data suggest that clinicians view three concerns to be of primary import when making release decisions: responsiveness to and compliance with the treatment, substance use, and risk of violence.

Categorization of aggressive acts committed by chronically assaultive state hospital patients.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined factors motivating inpatient aggression in a sample of chronically assaultive state hospital patients. METHODS: Inpatients who had committed three or more assaults over a one-year period were identified by using an incident report database. Aggressive episodes were categorized as impulsive, organized, or psychotic by using a procedure for classifying assaultive acts based on record review. Each assault type was further subcategorized. The relationship between assault type, victim (staff or patient), and legal status of the assaulter was also assessed. RESULTS: A total of 839 assaults committed by 88 chronically aggressive patients were reviewed. Although most patients had a primary psychotic disorder, the most common type of assault was impulsive (54%), rather than psychotic or organized. Staff were most often victimized by impulsive assaults in situations involving attempts to change a patient's unwanted behavior and refusal of a patient request. Organized and psychotic assaults occurred less frequently (29% and 17%, respectively) and were more likely to target other patients. Organized assaults were most often motivated by a desire to seek revenge. Psychotic assaults were most often committed by an assailant acting under the influence of paranoid ideations. Civilly committed patients were overrepresented in the sample. Criminally committed patients committed more acts of organized aggression, although this finding did not reach significance. CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that assaultive behavior among state hospital inpatients is complex and heterogeneous. Because each type of assault requires a different management approach, characterizing aggressive behavior may be important in determining which institutional programs and treatment-plan interventions to implement when addressing inpatient aggression.

Forensic psychiatric aspects of inpatient violence.

Inpatient aggression jeopardizes the safety of psychiatric clinicians and patients. A minority of psychiatric inpatients is responsible for most of inpatient assaults; this subset of repetitively assaultive patients warrants greater attention in the form of systematic study. In developing treatment approaches for assaultive inpatients, it is important to characterize the primary motivation driving aggressive behavior. There are many pharmacologic agents and psychotherapeutic approaches available to address inpatients who engage in impulsive and psychotic violence, but the treatment of inpatients with antisocial or psychopathy personality remain limited, and further study is needed. To protect the safety of patients and staff, criminal prosecution of inpatient assaults is clinically justified if an assailant continues to be aggressive despite appropriate clinical interventions or commits an act of planned aggression so egregious that prosecution is the only reasonable alternative.

Relationship between criminal arrest and community treatment history among patients with bipolar disorder.

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the relationship between criminal arrest and gender, substance use disorder, and use of community mental health services among patients with bipolar I disorder. METHODS: Los Angeles County's computerized management information system was used to retrospectively identify all inmates with a DSM-IV diagnosis of bipolar I disorder who were evaluated over a seven-month period in the psychiatric division of Los Angeles County Jail and had a history of psychiatric hospitalization in the community. Patients without a history of arrest who were involuntarily hospitalized in the community and treated for bipolar I disorder over the same seven-month period served as a comparison group. The use of community mental health services that inmates received before their arrest was quantified and compared with the services that patients in the comparison group received before their involuntary hospitalization. RESULTS: Patients who had been arrested (N = 66) were more likely than patients in the comparison group (N = 52) to be male (55 percent compared with 31 percent) and to have a history of substance use disorder (76 percent compared with 19 percent) but were less likely to have a history of treatment while under a mental health conservatorship (8 percent compared with 29 percent). In contrast to patients in the comparison group, patients who had been arrested were hospitalized more frequently (a mean of 3.4 hospitalizations per year compared with a mean of 1.1 hospitalizations per year) and had a briefer average length of stay (a mean of 9.2 days compared with a mean of 16.4 days). CONCLUSIONS: In contrast to patients in the comparison group, patients who had been arrested were more likely to be male, to have comorbid substance use disorder, and to have a treatment history characterized by more frequent, briefer hospitalizations.

Capacity of forensic patients to consent to research: the use of the MacCAT-CR.

The ability of psychiatric patients and prisoners to provide informed consent to participate in clinical research has given rise to much debate. Forensic psychiatric patients present a particular concern regarding their competence to consent to research, as they are both patients and prisoners. The primary goal of this research was to evaluate whether, by employing structured assessments of capacity to consent to research, we could determine if this combined vulnerability leads to differences in competence from the published abilities of nonforensic psychiatric patients. Subjects deemed incapable of providing informed consent scored differently and lower than the other consent groups on three aspects of the decision-making process. Diagnosis evidenced only a slight relationship to decision-making abilities, and this difference was only in the ability to understand the basic procedural elements of the research. Psychiatric symptoms were modestly related to decision-making. Positive symptoms were associated with poorer performance on the Understanding subscale of the MacCAT-CR, and negative symptoms were associated with lowered performance on the Reasoning subscale. These results are in accord with several published studies of nonforensic psychiatric patients and suggest that concerns regarding both forensic and nonforensic psychiatric patients' ability to provide informed consent may be unwarranted, especially in patients with few active symptoms.

Clinical and legal correlates of inmates with bipolar disorder at time of criminal arrest.

BACKGROUND: In an effort to determine illness factors associated with criminality among bipolar patients, we identified bipolar arrestees housed in the psychiatric division of the Los Angeles County Jail who had a history of psychiatric treatment in the Los Angeles County community mental health system. METHOD: Los Angeles County's computerized management information system was utilized to retrospectively identify all inmates evaluated over a 7-month period from July 1999 to Jan. 2000 with a DSM-IV diagnosis of bipolar I disorder, their symptoms at time of arrest, and the nature of community treatment preceding arrest. Criminal history was assessed using Sheriff's Department legal records. Demographic and clinical characteristics of these inmates were compared with characteristics present in a group of hospitalized bipolar patients without a history of arrest in Los Angeles County. RESULTS: Of the 66 inmates identified as having a clear diagnosis of bipolar disorder with previous community treatment in the Los Angeles County Mental Health system, the majority were manic (49/66, 74.2%) and psychotic (39/66, 59%) at time of arrest. Manic arrestees were recently released from community inpatient treatment and most were not involved in outpatient treatment postdischarge. The bipolar inmates had significantly higher rates of comorbid substance abuse than did the hospitalized bipolar patients without an arrest history (75.8% [50/66]) vs. 18.5% [10/54]). CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study suggest that manic symptoms place bipolar patients at significant risk for criminal offending and arrest. Intensive treatment intervention by the community mental health and criminal justice system may be needed, particularly in the immediate postmanic hospitalization period, in order to prevent incarceration of patients with bipolar disorder.

Examining the role of static and dynamic risk factors in the prediction of inpatient violence: variable- and person-focused analyses.

Although the construct of psychopathy is related to community violence and recidivism in various populations, empirical evidence suggests that its association with institutional aggression is weak at best. The current study examined, via both variable-level and group-level analyses, the relationship between standard violence risk instruments, which included a measure of psychopathy, and institutional violence. Additionally, the incremental validity of dynamic risk factors also was examined. The results suggest that PCL-R was only weakly related to institutional aggression and only then when the behavioral (Factor 2) aspects of the construct were examined. The clinical and risk management scales on the HCR-20, impulsivity, anger, and psychiatric symptoms all were useful in identifying patients at risk for exhibiting institutional aggression. These data suggest that factors other than psychopathy, including dynamic risk factors, may be most useful in identifying forensic patients at higher risk for exhibiting aggression.

Comorbid substance use disorder in women with bipolar disorder associated with criminal arrest.

OBJECTIVES: Previous research has indicated that comorbid substance abuse in patients with bipolar disorder (BPD) is strongly linked to criminal arrest. This study was conducted to further evaluate possible gender differences in substance use and risk of criminality in BPD. METHODS: Subjects were selected from all inmates with a DSM-IV diagnosis of BPD type I at Los Angeles County correctional facility. As a comparison, a sample of Los Angeles County patients with BPD type I who had not been arrested during the course of their psychiatric treatment within LA County was identified. The county's Management Information System (MIS) was utilized to obtain primary and secondary diagnoses as well as demographic information. RESULTS: The odds of having a comorbid substance use diagnosis for arrested female patients was more than 38 times that for community female patients (odds ratio = 38.75). Women were more likely to have been arrested for violent and substance use charges; men were more likely to have been arrested for theft and miscellaneous charges. CONCLUSIONS: Substance abuse appears to be a significant risk factor for arrest in patients with BPD and is especially significant for women with BPD. Our study suggests that comorbid BPD and substance use in women may significantly increase the risk of criminal arrest.

Clinical and legal characteristics of inmates with bipolar disorder.

Individuals with bipolar disorder are at an increased risk of criminal arrest compared with those in the population at large. The combination of manic symptoms and substance abuse seem to be the primary illness factors for this increased risk, and the public mental health system has faced challenges in treating these patients successfully in community settings. To decrease the risk for arrest in bipolar patients, clinicians can screen and refer patients for substance use disorders, stabilize mania in hospital settings, and take measures to improve outpatient adherence in the postmanic hospitalization period. Psychiatric advance directives, new developments in civil commitment law, and mental health courts are legal mechanisms that may be critical in preventing the criminalization of those with bipolar disorder.