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Mortality among mentally disordered offenders: a community based follow‐up study
Author(s) -
Björk Tabita,
Lindqvist Per
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
criminal behaviour and mental health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.63
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1471-2857
pISSN - 0957-9664
DOI - 10.1002/cbm.41
Subject(s) - psychiatry , cohort , population , medicine , demography , psychology , environmental health , sociology
Background Follow‐up information about outcome for hospitalized mentally disordered offenders (MDO) is necessary for evaluation and improvement in quality of forensic psychiatric care. Aim A study was undertaken to estimate the standard mortality rate (SMR) of a population based sample of people sentenced to forensic psychiatric care. Method All MDOs in Örebro County, Sweden, discharged from a forensic psychiatric treatment unit between 1992 and 1999 were identified (n = 46). The variables were gender, age, offence, diagnosis and duration of admission. Case linkage was made with the National Cause‐of‐Death register. Median follow‐up time was 53 months (0–93). Results The sample yielded a significantly elevated SMR 13.4 (95% CI 4.35–31.3) times higher than that in the general population, mostly due to suicide. Conclusions The cohort size is small but representative, and it provides data from an additional country for the growing international pool confirming the high risk of premature, generally self‐inflicted death among MDOs. Resettlement and rehabilitation services for them may need to take as much account of mortality risk as that of reoffending. Copyright © 2005 Whurr Publishers Ltd.