Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Monash University, 505 Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill, VIC 3068, Australia.
BMC Public Health. 2012 Jun 18;12:445. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-12-445.
Violent victimisation among people with major mental illness is well-documented but the risk factors for criminal violent victimisation are not well understood.
We examined the relationship between illness-related variables, indices of substance abuse and previous history of violence in a sample of 23 male criminally violently victimized and 69 non-criminally violently victimized male patients with DSM-IV-TR diagnoses of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder that were resident in the community and in contact with public mental health services in Victoria Australia. Data on criminal victimisation was acquired from the police database.
Demographic, a history of violence or illness-related variables did not distinguish between those had been the victim of a violent crime and those who had not. Our data indicated that drug abuse was a key factor in distinguishing between the groups, but the age of onset of substance abuse was not a significant factor. Scores on measures of drug abuse were modest predictors of criminal victimisation status in our Receiver Operator Characteristic analyses.
Overall, our findings suggest that substance abuse (particularly drug abuse) is a key predictor of violent victimisation based on criminal statistics. The latter has implications for mental health professions involved in the care planning and community management of patients with major mental illness and work points to the importance of substance abuse treatment in the prevention of victimisation as well as violence perpetration.
患有严重精神疾病的人遭受暴力侵害的情况屡见不鲜，但导致其遭受刑事暴力侵害的风险因素仍不甚明了。
我们对居住在澳大利亚维多利亚州、与公共精神卫生服务机构有联系的 23 名男性犯罪性暴力受害人和 69 名非犯罪性暴力受害男性患者进行了研究，这些患者的 DSM-IV-TR 诊断为精神分裂症和分裂情感性障碍。在该研究中，我们考察了与疾病相关的变量、物质滥用指标以及既往暴力史与患病相关的变量与这两组人群之间的关系。犯罪受害的数据来源于警方数据库。
人口统计学特征、暴力史或与疾病相关的变量并不能区分那些曾遭受暴力犯罪侵害的人和那些没有遭受暴力犯罪侵害的人。我们的数据表明，药物滥用是区分这两组人群的关键因素，但药物滥用的发病年龄并不是一个重要因素。在我们的受试者工作特征分析中，药物滥用量表的评分是刑事受害状况的一个适度预测指标。
总体而言，我们的研究结果表明，物质滥用（尤其是药物滥用）是基于刑事统计数据的暴力受害的一个关键预测因素。这对参与严重精神疾病患者护理计划和社区管理的精神卫生专业人员具有重要意义，也强调了物质滥用治疗在预防受害和暴力犯罪方面的重要性。
