[Depression in women - the victims of domestic violence (forensic psychiatry aspects)]. / Depressii u zhenshchin - zhertv domashnego nasiliia (sudebno-psikhiatricheskie nabliudeniia).

AIM: To study the development of depressive disorders in women, the victims of domestic violence, who committed aggressive acts. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients (n=12) were divided into two groups depending on acute depressive reaction in response to violence from husbands, which resulted in criminal acts. The first group included 4 women who killed their children and the second group included 8 women who killed their husbands. A psychopathological method was used in the study. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Women of both groups shared the same features of the development of depression: the transition from a neurotic stage to a psychotic stage (with aggression) and then to the prolonged depression. Every stage had its own features, in particular during the criminal act, which are described in the article.

[Clinical characteristics of depression in women in forensic- psychiatric practice]. / Klinicheskie osobennosti depressii u zhenshchin v sudebno- psikhiatricheskoi praktike.

A study has been carried out of the post-delivery and involutional depressive states through an analysis of 121 case reports of women with psychogenic depressions, who had committed severe crimes and were under the stationary forensic psychiatric investigation at the Serbsky All-Union Research Institute for General and Forensic Psychiatry. The data have shown that during the post-delivery and involutional periods and under some objectively hard and subjectively valuable psychogenic traumatic conditions, women may develop depressive psychoses which are accompanied by pathologically altruistic motivations for socially dangerous actions that are usually directed towards children, grandchildren and close relatives. The neurosis-like phase in the development of such states was discovered, promoting prevention of crimes in the described population of patients.

[Clinical picture, differential diagnosis and forensic-psychiatric evaluation of affective reactions in psychopathic patients with hysterical traits]. / Klinika, differentsial'naia diagnostika i sudebno-psikhiatricheskaia otsenka affektivnykh reaktsii u psikhopaticheskikh lichnostei istericheskogo kruga.

Forty women with a psychopathic hysterical structure of personality undergoing forensic-psychiatric examination at the V. P. Serbsky All-Union Research Institute of General and Forensic Psychiatry were examined for affective responses manifested at the time when they broke the law. The results of studies have shown that in a subjectively important psychogenic traumatic situation hysterical psychopaths present affective responses differing in severity, which dictated the differential forensic-psychiatric evaluation of these states. In patients who were considered responsible in relation to the law-breaking act affective responses were personal in nature and were expressed in exacerbation of psychopathic features in the framework of the accustomed pattern of reacting. Some subjects presented a state of psychopathic decompensation of a psychotic level at the moment of the law-breaking act, which accounts for exculpation of this group.