Browsing by Subject "PCL-R"

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.

Abstract Background and Objectives. Psychopathy is defined as a personality construction characterized by deviant interpersonal, affective, lifestyle related and antisocial traits, such as manipulativeness, pathological lying, emotional coldness, lack of empathy, remorse and long-term goals, impulsiveness and usually also criminal lifestyle. The prevalence of psychopathy is less than one percent in population, though it is much higher among incarcerated people. Therefore, psychopathy is considered a major social and financial burden to the society. There have been made plenty of research about neurobiological and physiological components of psychopathy. This study aims to specify those neurobiological and physical components that separate psychopaths from other people. Research methods. The data was gathered mainly using Google Scholar website. The aim was to search for peer reviewed articles from years 2004 to 2019 with keywords “psychopath” or ”psychopathy” combined with words such as ”criminality”, ”neurology”, ”neurobiology”, ”neurophysiology” and ”neuroimaging”. Inner references of research articles were also utilized. Results and Conclusions. The current neurobiological models of psychopathy present amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex and these dysfunctional connections as well as paralimbic system and its dysfunction as the typical neurobiological components of psychopathy. Neurobiological anomalies connected to psychopathy include reduced amygdala volume and activation, hippocampal structural asymmetry, reduced frontal lobe activation and abnormal activity in networks connecting limbic areas. These are especially seen with criminal psychopaths. Also, low skin conductance, weak activation in corrugator supercilii muscle and weak or absent startle response are seen to be connected to psychopathy. These findings can be accounting for lack of emotional reactions such as fear and empathy and also emotional coldness. Generalization of results is impaired by homogeneity of samples resulting from concentrating on prisoners and incarcerated population, as well as small sample sizes. Based on the study, it´s possible to understand the essence of psychopathy as a construction, that links neurobiological and physiological anomalies and their synergies.