Childhood Maltreatment and Aggressive Behaviour in Violent Offenders with Psychopathy

Abstract

Objective: To document experiences of childhood maltreatment among violent offenders with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) distinguishing between those with and without the syndrome of psychopathy (+P and -P), and to determine whether maltreatment is associated with proactive and reactive aggression. Method:The sample included 10 violent offenders with ASPD+P, 15 violent offenders with ASPD-P, and 15 nonoffenders. All participants completed interviews with the same forensic psychiatrist focusing on physical, sexual, and emotional abuse prior to age 18 using the Early Trauma Inventory. Aggression was assessed using the Reactive-Proactive Questionnaire.Results: Violent offenders with ASPD+P reported significantly more severe childhood physical abuse, but not more sexual or emotional abuse, than violent offenders with ASPD-P and nonoffenders. Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) scores, but not childhood physical abuse, were associated with proactive aggression. Childhood physical abuse was associated with reactive aggression, as was an interaction term indicating that when both PCL-R scores and childhood physical abuse were high, so was reactive aggression.Conclusions: Among violent offenders, PCL-R scores were positively associated with proactive aggression, while experiences of childhood maltreatment were not. This finding concurs with previous studies of children and adults and suggests that proactive aggression may be a behavioural marker of psychopathic traits. By contrast, childhood physical abuse was associated with reactive aggression, even among violent offenders with high PCL-R scores. This latter finding suggests a strong influence of childhood physical abuse on the development of reactive aggression that persists over the lifespan. W W W

Aggression in Psychoses

“…The interaction between childhood maltreatment and MAOA polymorphism described above [55] partially explained the differences in the effects of maltreatment on violent behavior [56]. More recent reports confirm the association between childhood maltreatment and adult criminal violence in individuals without schizophrenia [57,58].…”

Preventing Violence in Patients with Schizophrenia

“…In persons without schizophrenia, there is a relationship between childhood maltreatment and violent behavior in adulthood [12][13][14], and this relationship may be moderated by genomic factors [12,15].…”

Social skills and psychopathic traits in maltreated adolescents

“…Only two studies to date have investigated associations between these three variables together, childhood maltreatment, social skill deficits and antisocial behaviours [27,33], but the use of self-report measures is a significant limitation in those investigations, since psychopathy per se is characterized by pathological lying, insincerity and cheating [28,29]. Moreover, these studies were restricted to the investigation of samples from high-income countries [22,23,27,33]. Considering that the environment has an expressive influence on social behaviour, investigations in different countries and socioeconomic contexts are crucial for a better understanding of these complex and multifaceted phenomena.…”

“…Physical abuse was more associated with externalizing behaviours [15,16], while sexual and emotional abuse predicted internalizing behaviours [16] and social withdrawal [17]. Social skill deficits may also predispose maltreated individuals to behavioural problems, such as peer rejection [18], behavioural maladjustment [19], conduct disorders [20,21], as well as psychopathic traits in adulthood [22][23][24][25][26] and antisocial personality disorder [27].…”