[Epidemiologic parameters of mentally ill patients subjected to mandatory treatment].

INTRODUCTION

Criminally insanes form a special group of mentally ill patients. This paper investigated some psychiatric, criminological and social aspects of the above mentioned group of patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

The author summarized the data of 114 patients whom he treated in the Forensic Mental Institute at least for two months between 1st February 1997 and 31th January 2002. And these data of mandatory treated patients were compared with that of offenders being sentenced because of a violent crime.

RESULTS

The reason of why the majority of criminally insanes ran counter to the law was that they committed or attempted homicide, while violent offenders rather committed rowdyism, bodily injury and robbery. Concerning the victims of crimes the subgroups of male and female mandatory treated insanes showed similarity to the groups of male and female offenders committed violent crime, respectively. Namely males committed crime against their non-family members, while in the majority of cases females attacked their family members. The pecularities of mandatory treated insanes are the following. The majority of those were single and had been treated in a psychiatric department before mandatory treatment started, but only the minority of those attempted suicide. It was not a negligible subgroup of criminal insanes whose illness was diagnosed after they had committed the crime. The question emerges whether in these cases a latent development of disease or an initial delict should be taken into consideration.

CONCLUSION

The initiation of a national, comparative survey is necessary, which on the one hand would help in psychiatric prevention, on the other hand the scientific investigation of criminalization of mentally ill patients would promote the elimination of prejudice saying that mentally ill patients commit violent crimes more frequently than their normal counterparts.