Examining the economic costs of crime associated with psychopathic personality disorder: A reply to Verona and Joyner (2022).

In our article, "How much does that cost? Examining the economic costs of crime in North America attributable to people with psychopathic personality disorder" (Gatner et al., 2023, pp. 391-400), we estimated that psychopathic personality disorder (PPD) was associated with substantial crime costs, using a top-down approach of national costs in the United States and Canada. Verona and Joyner (2023) raised several concerns about our findings. Although we think some of their points help to map directions for future research, we disagree with others they raised related to the conceptualization of PPD, the problem of undetected crimes, and their concerns with putative national comparisons. We strongly welcome debate about the societal impacts of PPD in the hope that it spurs increased attention and innovation regarding the treatment and management of PPD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

How much does that cost? Examining the economic costs of crime in North America attributable to people with psychopathic personality disorder.

Cost of illness research has established that mental disorders lead to significant social burden and massive financial costs. A significant gap exists for the economic burden of many personality disorders, including psychopathic personality disorder (PPD). In the current study, we used a top-down prevalence-based cost of illness approach to estimate bounded crime cost estimates of PPD in the United States and Canada. Three key model parameters (PPD prevalence, relative offending rate of individuals with PPD, and national costs of crime for each country) were informed by existing literature. Sensitivity analyses and Monte Carlo simulations were conducted to provide bounded and central tendency estimates of crime costs, respectively. The estimated PPD-related costs of crime ranged from $245.50 billion to $1,591.57 billion (simulated means = $512.83 to $964.23 billion) in the United States and $12.14 billion to $53.00 billion (simulated means = $25.33 to $32.10 billion) in Canada. These results suggest that PPD may be associated with a substantial economic burden as a result of crime in North America. Recommendations are discussed regarding the burden-treatment discrepancy for PPD, as the development of future effective treatment for the disorder may decrease its costly burden on health and justice systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).