Emotional dysregulation and trauma predicting psychopathy dimensions in female and male juvenile offenders.

Kathrin Sevecke,Sebastian Franke,Maya Krischer,David Kosson

doi:10.1186/s13034-016-0130-7

Abstract

BackgroundPsychopathy is a specific syndrome that predicts future violent and aggressive behavior in adults. Studies in youth and adults have demonstrated a strong association between early traumatic incidents and later dissocial behavior. Moreover, the impact of personality pathology and emotional dysregulation on aggressive and violent behavior is well established. However, few studies have addressed the relationship between early traumatization and psychopathic traits in adolescents.MethodThe present study examined associations between both general dimensions of personality pathology and early traumatic experiences and the dimensions of psychopathy in 170 male and 171 female adolescent detainees.ResultsAnalyses revealed associations between physical abuse, emotional dysregulation and psychopathic traits in delinquent boys but not in delinquent girls.ConclusionHypothesized relationships between trauma, personality pathology could only be confirmed in the lifestyle and antisocial, but not in the core affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy.

Highlights

Psychopathy is a specific syndrome that predicts future violent and aggressive behavior in adults
Hypothesized relationships between trauma, personality pathology could only be confirmed in the lifestyle and antisocial, but not in the core affective and interpersonal facets of psychopathy
To minimize overlap within the domain of personality pathology we focused on the dimension of emotional dysregulation: Kushner et al [63] recently showed in a hierarchical analysis of the dimensional assessment of personality pathologybasic questionnaire (DAPP-BQ) that as much as 76% of the variance captured by this instrument is accounted for by an emotional dysregulation factor

Summary

Introduction

Psychopathy is a specific syndrome that predicts future violent and aggressive behavior in adults. Klintenberg, and Alm [18] studied the implications of childhood neglect and/ or abuse for adults’ scores on the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) [19] and violent offending. They found that those with more severe victimization histories had higher psychopathy scores than those with less severe victimization histories. They suggested that in some individuals the Sevecke et al Child Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health (2016) 10:43 association between early childhood victimization and violence might be mediated by psychopathy. Marshall and Cooke [14] found in their study comparing childhood experiences of criminal adult psychopaths with non-psychopaths that childhood familial and societal experiences were strongly correlated with PCL-R scores and influenced the adult outcomes

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Discussion

Conclusion