The impact of an intensive inpatient violent offender treatment programme on intermediary treatment targets, violence risk and aggressive behaviour in a sample of mentally disordered offenders

Abstract

This study examined the impact of an intensive inpatient violent offender treatment programme, Life Minus Violence -Enhanced (LMV-E, Ireland, 2008), on intermediary treatment targets, risk for violence, and aggressive behaviour during treatment in a sample of male mentally disordered offenders. Using quasi-experimental design, offenders who completed LMV-E and a comparison group showed reduced problems with impulsivity and anger regulation and improvements in social problem solving.Aggregate risk for future violence lessened in both treatment and comparison groups, although by a significantly greater degree for the comparison group. The aggressive behaviour of both groups reduced. Completion of the LMV-E conferred additional improvements in some facets of social problem solving and anger regulation. Neither group showed improvements in empathic responses, coping skills or problematic interpersonal style. Overall, these results suggest anger regulation, impulsivity and social problem solving are most amenable to change, that reductions in certain facets of these dynamic risk factors transpires with nonspecific psychiatric inpatient treatment, but that the LMV-E, a cognitive behavioural violence specific psychological treatment, confers greater change in some facets of social problem solving and anger regulation.

A meta‐analytic review of the efficacy of psychological treatments for violent offenders in correctional and forensic mental health settings.

“…Again, although not statistically considered outliers, further sensitivity analyses were conducted in which three potentially biased studies were removed from the analysis: Dowden and Serin (), for reasons described above, along with Daffern et al. () and Serin et al. (), as treatment and comparison groups were not equivalent in their pretreatment involvement in misconducts, with the treatment groups involved in more misconducts than the control groups.…”

Evaluating treatment outcomes for young people participating in a high‐intensity therapeutic violence intervention in the English Youth Custody Service

“…This concurs with outcomes found by Daffern et al . (), who reported similar results using SPSI‐R with adult participants.…”

“…For instance, Daffern et al . 's () study found no evidence of change on empathy‐related measures, whilst Serin, Gobeil, and Preston () found no evidence for empathy change through intervention. This study's apparently contradictory findings may be explainable from two perspectives; first, the measure used to assess empathy was clinical, with psychologists evaluating the empathy participants demonstrated.…”

“…These outcomes concur with Daffern et al . 's () evaluation of LMV‐E with adults, which found treatment‐related changes in impulsivity, social problem‐solving, anger regulation, and sensitivity to provocation. Daffern et al .…”

“…One of the most common methods has been to use self‐report questionnaires to review pre‐ and post‐intervention scores on key treatment targets. This continues to be widely used (e.g., Apsche, Bass, Siv et al ., 2005; Beech & Chauhan, ; Daffern, Simpson, Ainslie, & Chu, ; Palmer & Humphries, ; Tew, Dixon, Harkins, & Bennett, ). Despite critique that psychometrics are reductionist and may not have strong ecological validity, they remain a useful method by which to gain some understanding of treatment‐related change within domains articulated in the underlying model.…”