Parricide cases of adult offenders from Turkey: A descriptive study.

The aim of this study was to examine and compare similarities and differences among types of parricide committed by adult offenders. The forensic psychiatric evaluation reports of the 4th Specialization Board of the Council of Forensic Medicine from 2009 to 2011 in Turkey were screened retrospectively. One hundred thirty-five adult perpetrators of parricide (125 male, 10 female) were detected, 51.9% of whom committed patricide, 40% of whom matricide and 8.1% of the perpetrators committed double parricide. Most of the perpetrators used sharp instruments as the killing method. No mental disorders were detected in 58.5% of the perpetrators, while psychotic disorders were identified in 30.4% of the cases. This study supported the predominance of sharp instruments as the killing method and a preponderance of matricide among the offenders with psychotic disorders. Although psychotic disorders were the most commonly detected mental disorders in the parricide offenders, most of them did not suffer from mental disorders.

Differences in Handwritings of Schizophrenia Patients and Examination of the Change after Treatment.

The aim of this study was to analyze the differences between the handwritings of schizophrenia patients and healthy subjects in addition to the changes that occurred in schizophrenia patients' handwriting in response to the treatment. The test subjects were 29 schizophrenia patients and 29 healthy individuals with the same age, gender, and dominant hand. The changes in the handwritings were examined according to 14 different parameters. On the day of admittance, the percentage of extra letters was 16.7%, and after 7-10 days of hospitalization, it rose to 33.3%. The percentage of skipped words decreased from 29.2% to 16.7% after 7-10 days of hospitalization, and to 10% after 3 weeks. The letters written by schizophrenia patients are significantly larger in height and width compared to the control group. The schizophrenia patients showed a higher incidence of crossed-out letters, adding extra words, missing punctuation as well as missing words.

Facial emotion recognition in male antisocial personality disorders with or without adult attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate facial emotion recognition abilities in violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder who have comorbid attention deficient hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or not. METHOD: The photos of happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgust, and neutral facial expressions and Wender Utah Rating Scale have been performed in all groups. RESULTS: The mean ages were as follows: in antisocial personality disorder with ADHD 22.0 ± 1.59, in pure antisocial individuals 21.90 ± 1.80 and in controls 22.97 ± 2.85 (p>0.05). The mean score in Wender Utah Rating Scale was significantly different between groups (p<0.001). The mean accurate responses to each facial emotion between groups were insignificant (p>0.05) excluding disgust faces which was significantly impaired in ASPD+ADHD and pure ASPD groups. Antisocial individuals with attention deficient and hyperactivity had spent significantly more time to each facial emotion than healthy controls (p<0.05) while pure antisocial individual had more time to recognize disgust and neutral faces than healthy controls (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Study of complex social cognitive abilities in adults with ADHD and violent behaviors is lacking. This study is the first, investigating the differences according to social cognition cues in violent individual that revealed no significance within pure antisocial individuals and antisocial individuals with ADHD.

Facial emotion recognition in patients with violent schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND: People with schizophrenia are more likely considered to be violent than the general population. Besides some well described symptoms, patients with schizophrenia have problems in recognizing basic facial emotions which could underlie the misinterpretation of others' intentions that could lead to violent behaviors. We aimed to investigate the facial emotion recognition ability in violent or non-violent patients with schizophrenia. METHODS: The severity in both groups was evaluated according to the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale. A computer-based test included the photos of four male and four female models with happy, surprised, fearful, sad, angry, disgusted, and neutral facial expressions from Ekman & Friesen's series has been performed to groups. Totally, 41 outpatients with violent schizophrenia and 35 outpatients with non-violent schizophrenia participated in the study. RESULTS: The mean age of violent schizophrenia group was 41.50±7.56, and control group's mean age was 39.94±6.79years. There were no significant differences between groups among reaction time for each emotion while recognizing them (p>0.05). In addition, the accuracy rate of answers towards facial emotion recognition test for each emotion and the distribution misidentifications were not significantly different between groups (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The facial emotion recognition in violent schizophrenia is lacking and we found that the facial emotion recognition ability in violent schizophrenia seems to be a trait feature of the illness.

Attitudes among judiciary and junior clerks toward the survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Childhood sexual abuse is a growing concern throughout the world, although the legal sequelae of this phenomenon are frequently neglected. We aimed to reveal and compare the attitudes of judiciary and junior clerks toward sexually abused children that might contribute to these sequelae. We divided 302 study participants into two groups of judiciary members and junior clerks. All the participants were asked to anonymously complete a questionnaire about stigmatization, including questions assessing social distance, dangerousness and skillfulness. In their responses, 51.2% of the judiciary and 64.0% of the junior clerks displayed a negative attitude toward "asking a childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivor to supervise their child for few hours" (p=0.029). When asked "What would you think if your child wanted to marry a CSA survivor?" 76.5% of the judiciary and 84.1% of the junior clerks were opposed to the idea (p=0.095). Interestingly, significantly more judiciary than junior clerks believed that a "CSA survivor can control his/her rage" (p=0.001), and significantly more of the junior clerks did not believe that "CSA survivors do not behave impulsively" (p=0.034). Both groups of legal professionals in this study appear to distance themselves from or have negative thoughts about CSA survivors, particularly when the issue involves their own children and/or social situations. Along with other factors, these negative assumptions might also contribute to lower prosecution rates and retestifying procedures.