Forensic-psychiatric meaning of paranoiac conditions with personality disorders

Abstract

The aim of the study is to specify criteria of expert evaluation of patients diagnosed as having Personality Disorders who have committed criminal offences. These patients have had paranoiac ideas: supervaluable (übervertige idea by Wernicke), dominant pathological, paranoiac delusional ideas.

115 patients (105 men, 10 women) have been examined in the study. Age: 20-69 years old. Diagnosis of Personality Disorders have been established according to the diagnostic criteria of the International Classification of Diseases, Traumas and Cause of Deaths: ICD-10 and also to the Classification of the American Psychiatric Association: DSM-IV. Diagnosis of Paranoid Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder were most common (73%).

The study has revealed that paranoiac ideas have arisen after the prolonged psychological stress (infringement of family relations, job conflicts, unemployment and etc). Contents of the paranoiac ideas (jealousy, querulous ideas, persecution ideas, and hypochondria) depended on characteristic of the stress.

Established: Patients who have had supervaluable ideas were responsible for their offences. Contents of the supervaluable ideas did not influence upon their criminal actions. These ideas were concrete, did not tend to expand and existed for a short time. Affective dominant ideas reflected the situation of criminal action. The patients could not forecast the consequence of their actions, so it was furnish condition. Patients with paranoiac delusional ideas were considered to be irresponsible.