[MURDER STEMMING FROM INSANITY: DEMOGRAPHIC, CRIMINAL, PSYCHIATRIC AND FORENSIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PERPETRATORS].

INTRODUCTION: Violence among individuals with mental disorders and murder while in a psychotic state have been studied extensively worldwide. AIMS: To examine the socio-demographic, psychiatric, criminal, forensic and other characteristics of people who committed murder in Israel and were not prosecuted for reasons of insanity. This is the largest such study to date conducted in Israel. METHODS: The files (medical and legal documents) of all patients (N=80) hospitalized in the maximum-security division of Sha'ar Menashe Mental Health Center by court order following murder, were examined. RESULTS: Ninety percent of the participants were diagnosed with schizophrenia and 70% had prior psychiatric hospitalizations before committing murder. Most participants had documented substance abuse and previous violence stemming from mental disorders and did not regularly attend psychiatric follow-ups or take medication between hospitalizations. The motives were usually paranoid delusions. The victims were generally known to the killer, usually family members, and most perpetrators remained at the scene after the murder. CONCLUSIONS: Therapeutic sequence and preventive actions should be implemented in the treatment of this high-risk group. DISCUSSION: Findings delineate characteristics of homicide perpetrators stemming from mental disorders, from which a risk group may be described.

Collaborative remembering of emotional events: the case of Rabin's assassination.

Individual and collaborative remembering of the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister, Itzhak Rabin, were compared. In line with previous laboratory findings on memory of neutral stimuli, it was hypothesised that collaborative remembering (three individuals reaching a common response) and nominal remembering (three individual responses pooled together) of the assassination would be more accurate than individual remembering. A total of 146 participants responded (115 individually and 120 in groups of three) to open-ended and multiple-choice questionnaires (among them, 89 responded twice with a week of intertest interval) about Rabin's assassination and the events that preceded and followed it. Data analysis showed that the collaborative responses to the open-ended questionnaire contained more details (both accurate and inaccurate) than the individual responses, and that the responses to the multiple-choice questionnaire were more accurate than the individual responses. However, the collaborative responses contained fewer details (both accurate and inaccurate) than the nominal responses. Responses to the two questionnaires were more accurate on the retest when they followed collaborative rather than individual responses on the original test. The inferiority of the collaborative relative to the nominal remembering was attributed to collaborative inhibition, whereas the positive effect of collaborative remembering on performance on the retest was attributed to the contribution of contextual cues.