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Abstract Psychological criminal behaviour that refers to actions that may be rewarding to the actor but inflict pain or loss on others - it is criminal behaviour that is anti-social behaviour (Andrew and Bonta, 1998). Criminal behavior and violent crimes present many social, legal and clinical problems. In the past 25 years, numerous studies have shown a moderate albeit statistically significant association between major mental disorders, criminal behaviour and violent crimes (Fazel and Grann, 2004). It is well established that people in correctional and forensic mental health settings have higher rates of personality disorder, especially antisocial personality disorder, than people in the general community (Fazel and Danesh, 2002). The aim of current study is to determine the relation between schizophrenia, mood disorders, dual diagnosis and substance use disorder diagnoses and criminal behavior, highlighting the correlation between personality traits and criminal behaviour. The researcher interviewed 100 psychiatric patients from the inpatient ward (after a written informed consent)who met the DSM-IV diagnosis of mental disorders, criteria included for patients were set as age varying from 18 to 60, gender including males and females, with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, mood disorders, dual diagnosis and substance use disorders according to the DSM-IV diagnostic classification, the patients were divided into 25 patients for each diagnosis. Patients who were excluded were those having concomitant non psychiatric illness that could have cause violence or enduring personality changes. Tools used were socio-demographic data sheet, the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders (SCID-I) (First et al., 1994), it was translated to Arabic version and was validated (Shaker et al., 2003), which was developed to provide broad coverage of psychiatric diagnoses according to DSM-IV, the Structured Clinical Interview (SCID-II) (First et al., 1997), it was translated to Arabic version and was validated (Hatata et al., 2004), a designed clinical forensic psychiatry sheet in Arabic language about the patients’ criminal history regarding the type of crime committed either adult or civil and the presence of substance intake around the time of crime action, and the Symptom Check List -90-R (Derogatis and Savitz, 2000), the Arabic validated version of symptom check list -90-R questionnaire was used (El-Behairy, 2005), which is a self -rating psychometric questionnaire to screen mental health symptoms. There were two types of crimes in past history of the sample adult crime (16%) and civil crime (7%). Adult crimes consist of assault (3%), sexual assault (2%), and homicide (1%), drug trafficking (4%), drug abuse (6%). Civil crimes consist of escape of military service (5%), theft (1%) and expense issue (1%). Regarding socio-demographic data in relation to other variables the results show statistically significant relation between the history of committing a crime and the gender variable 20% of the males had history of committing a crime, while 1% of the female had history of committing a crime, while the other socio-demographic data showed no significance,the data showed statistically non-significant relation between the intake of substance around the time of the crime committed and the socio-demographic data, It was observed that adult crimes rated higher in both mean age groups than civil ones (14% versus 5% respectively), males group committed more crimes than females group. Regarding the marital status relation with adult crimes committed: single patients committed the highest rates (15.3%) while the married and divorced patients rated the same (12.5%) and widowed patients committed no adult crimes (0.0%). Considering educational level adults crimes were shown to be primarily committed by university graduate patients (25%), followed by institute graduates, then by illiterate, to be less in patients who dropped school (8%) and nil in technical school graduate patients. Unemployed patients committed more adult crimes than employed patients. While the results showed no statistically significant relation between the types of crime committed either: adult, civil or adult and civil regarding socio-demographic data. This gives sound prediction that males commit more crimes than females as men are more overtly aggressive due to testosterone levels and muscular physiques, while women are less offending and more victimized in criminology records due to differences in physical stamina, less controlling in society, and being more attached to child care responsibilities. No significant values may be due to the small sample size and unequal numbers of males and females in our sample. Regarding Axis I in relation to other variables the results demonstrated that patients diagnosed with poly substance abuse reported the highest statistical significant count of committing a crime (9%) followed by dual diagnosis (7%), mood disorders (3%), while patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were the least (2%), with statistically significant relation, in addition patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and mood disorders didn’t report taking substance around the crime time while patients diagnosed with poly substance abuse and dual diagnosis carried out the crimes in temporal relation with substance intake with statistically significant relation, despite adult crimes are mainly committed by patients diagnosed with poly substance abuse followed by dual diagnosis, then mood disorders and schizophrenia, the results showed no statistically significant relation between types of crimes and psychiatric diagnosis of axis I in patients. This is genuinely expected as patients with both substance use disorder and dual diagnosis are commonly expected to be intoxicated most of the time. Another reason might be the cognitive impairment in mood disorders and psychosis that fades the memory to retrieve such detailed data by the patients and also might be due to ECT application recently. This goes with the study’s hypothesis that there would be a direct proportionate relation between substance abuse and criminal assaults rates as substance abuse causes loss of inhibition on aggressive and sexual impulses plus irritability, poor judgment, paranoid ideation and distorted perception, make crimes a means to obtain money to get the drugs and the association of drug intake. For Axis II in relation to other variables it was observed that cluster (B) showed higher tendency for committing crimes than the other clusters yet with no significant relation declared between the history of committing a crime and personality traits clusters, it was also noticed that cluster (B) personality traits showed higher tendency for substance intake around the time of crime, but the results showed no significant relation between the intake of substance around the time of the crime committed and the type of personality traits in patients, also non-significant relation as found in personality cluster classification, The study observed a statistically significant relation between types of crimes and personality clusters, Cluster (B) has the highest score of adult crimes committed (15.6%) followed by cluster C (14.3%), cluster A (11.1%). This could be explained that cluster (B) emotional erratic personality traits and offences patterns are strongly bonded being explained by callous emotions, psychopathic minds, total disregard of and abuse of others’ rights and the presence of substance abuse in antisocial traits, while in borderline traits there are underlying emotional and relationships instability, impulsivity, intense anger, fleeting paranoia and substance abuse rates, while in histrionic traits there are manipulative skills in relationships and grandiosity and anger in narcissistic traits. In psychiatric symptomatology it was noticed that hostility and history of committing a crime was highly statistically significant, and between hostility and types of crimes, meanwhile, other symptoms were not statistically significant like somatic symptoms, obsessive compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobia, paranoid ideation, and psychotism. This is expected as hostility is the bio-psycho-social-context of a criminal offender, also axis 2 disorder especially cluster B know to have hostile symptoms especially antisocial personality disorder. |