Psychiatric Aspects of Criminal Behavior

Abstract

Physicians treat criminals in penal, general hospital, and office settings. Some doctors are consultants to, or full-time employees of, penal institutions. Physicians need to know about psychiatric and general medical syndromes commonly diagnosed in criminals. And the medical profession has an obligation to do research on medical aspects of criminality. Unfortunately, despite considerable research on psychiatric syndromes associated with criminality, these contributions have thus far been of limited usefulness. One reason is that two of the commoner syndromes, sociopathy and Briquet’s syndrome, have no known cure. Another is that some criminologists are not aware of the research; for example, Silberman’s 1978 overview [1] of criminology makes no reference to any of the studies described below.