Browsing by Author "Westerlund, Inka"

Psychopathy is an abnormality of personality characterized by, for example, superficiality of emotional life, glibness, manipulation, and antisociality. Psychopathic individuals burden each stage of the justice system, and they are overrepresented in prison. Psychopathic people fall into violent crimes and also repeat their crimes more often than others. Contradictory results have been obtained in the past for the treatment of psychopathic individuals, and sometimes the treatment may even have worsened psychopathy. There is a general perception that treating psychopathic individuals is impossible or at least very difficult. There are many limitations in previous studies and overall research on the topic is still quite limited. Psychopathy is not a diagnosis recognized by common diagnostic manuals. It can be reliably assessed by using the PCL-R checklist, which is the most widely used and accepted tool for assessing psychopathy. The aim of this review was to determine whether violent offenders who have been assessed psychopathic with the PCL-R checklist or it`s youth version PCL:YV, can be treated. Studies published in the 21st century on the response to treatment of psychopathic violent offenders were used as source literature. This review dealt with treatments for adults and adolescents separately. The results obtained from the treatment of adults were cautiously promising. In particular, treatment could contribute to the improvement of social skills and insight. Overall, the risk of violence was reduced through treatment, but among some psychopathic individuals, violent behavior increased. This could be the result of a repulsive attitude towards treatment or authorities. The results from the treatment of young people were more promising. Intensive care for adolescents halved the risk of violent crimes, and the number of psychopathic features was not found to affect the response to treatment. Long-term treatment gave the best results. The results are promising, especially for young people. However, the results are still preliminary. In order to draw more certain conclusions, more randomized and controlled trials should be made. In addition, the persistence of treatment outcomes should be investigated in follow-up studies with long follow-up periods.