Abstract
BackgroundViolent victimisation among people with major mental illness is well-documented but the risk factors for criminal violent victimisation are not well understood.MethodsWe 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.ResultsDemographic, 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.ConclusionOverall, 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.
Highlights
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 nature of relationships between demographic variables, illness-related variables including current symptoms, prior history of violence, and substance abuse- related factors in a cohort of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders who were resident in the community and who had or had not been victims of violent crime according to official criminal databases
Demographic data There were no significant group differences on demographic variables between those who had been the victim of a violent offence (VVO) and those who had not (NVVO)
Summary
Violent victimisation among people with major mental illness is well-documented but the risk factors for criminal violent victimisation are not well understood. Many of the psychosocial risk factors for violence in mentally disordered populations are similar to those for violent victimisation including; younger age, homelessness, socioeconomic disadvantage, active symptoms of mental illness, personality disorder, and substance abuse [13,22,24,27,28,29]. There are a number of studies suggesting links between victimisation and a range of illness related variables include active symptoms [15,21,23,26,30], a younger age of illness onset [15,21,22,27], and a chronic course of illness [14]. Substance abuse has been linked with violent victimisation among mentally disordered individuals [9,14,16,22,23,24,27,28,30]
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