Sociodemographic and psychological risk and protective factors for violence among individuals with mental illness

Work Package 2 (WP 2) in the PreVio project focuses on subgoal 3: Investigate the effect of sociodemographic and psychological risk and protective factors for violence among individuals with mental illness.

The data source for this work package is a quantitative study (sTOP n≈200), where we have previously studied brain characteristics, psychopathic traits, and childhood trauma. The already collected dataset includes four groups:

1. Psychosis patients with a history of severe violence (homicide, attempted homicide, serious assault against others). Recruitment setting: forensic psychiatric departments.
2. Non-psychotic violent offenders serving a prison sentence for violence (including homicide, attempted homicide, and serious assault against others). Recruitment setting: preventive detention prison units.
3. Psychosis patients without a history of severe violence from the ongoing multicenter sTOP study at the University of Oslo and collaborating hospitals in Norway. Recruitment setting: Psychiatric in- and outpatient units.
4. Healthy control subjects randomly selected from the national population register, from the TOP study at the University of Oslo, and from collaborating hospitals in Norway.

For all groups, the inclusion criteria are age between 18-65 years and an IQ score above 70. The two psychosis groups (1 and 2) are matched on clinical characteristics such as medication use and substance dependence. For the controls within prison and the healthy general population controls, a history of psychosis is an exclusion criterion. Due to the legal system in Norway, individuals in group 3, have been subject to a full psychiatric evaluation as part of the criminal proceedings, concluding that they were not psychotic (i.e., criminally responsible in Norwegian legal terms). All participant samples/groups are matched on age, gender, and diagnosis and are thoroughly clinically characterized by specially trained psychologists and physicians. The project has permission to collect and incorporate court data on criminal sentencing as well as the forensic expert examinations.