Mental Disorder and Crime: Evidence From a Danish Birth Cohort

doi:10.1001/archpsyc.1996.01830060031004

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Vol. 53 No. 6, June 1996

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Mental Disorder and Crime

Evidence From a Danish Birth Cohort

Sheilagh Hodgins, PhD; Sarnoff A. Mednick, DrMed, PhD; Patricia A. Brennan, PhD; Fini Schulsinger, MD; Marianne Engberg, MD, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1996;53(6):489-496.

Abstract

Background
Evidence has accumulated since the mid 1960s from a number ofdifferent countries indicating an association between mentaldisorder and crime and particularly between the major mentaldisorders and violence. Registries in Denmark were used to identifya birth cohort and to document all psychiatric admissions andall criminal proceedings of the 324 401 members of this cohortup to the age of 43 years.

Methods
Persons who had been admitted to a psychiatric ward were assignedto a diagnostic category according to a hierarchy of principaldischarge diagnoses. They were compared with persons never admittedto a psychiatric ward as to the prevalence, type, and frequencyof criminal convictions.

Results
Women and men who had been hospitalized in psychiatric wardswere more likely to have been convicted of a criminal offensethan persons with no history of psychiatric hospitalization.The offenders who were hospitalized committed all types and,on average, as many offenses as did the never-hospitalized groupof the same sex.

Conclusions
These findings confirm those from 2 other post-World War IIScandinavian birth cohorts that have found an association betweenpsychiatric hospitalization and criminal convictions. They alsoconcur with findings that patients discharged from psychiatricwards are more likely than other persons living in the samecommunity to commit crimes and with results from North Americashowing elevated rates of major mental disorders among incarceratedoffenders. Generalization of these findings is limited to nationswith similar criminal justice, mental health, and social welfaresystems.

Author Affiliations

From the Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Quebec (Dr Hodgins); Department of Psychology (Dr Mednick) and Social Science Research Institute (Dr Brennan), University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Institute for Preventive Medicine, Kommunehospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark (Drs Mednick and Schulsinger); and the Institute of Psychiatric Demography, Aarhus, Denmark (Dr Engberg).

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