The psychiatric assessment of dangerousness at Valkenberg Hospital, with particular reference to State President's patients

Cohen, Andrea

The psychiatric assessment of dangerousness at Valkenberg Hospital, with particular reference to State President's patients

Thesis / Dissertation

1991

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Department of Psychology

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

The concept of dang,:rousness has emerged as one of the raost controversial issues in conteraporary psycholegal research and practice, Psychiatric involvement in the prediction of dangerousness has been critisised, and psychiatrists' abilities to predict dangerousness have been challenged, Research in the area has investigated the relationship between mental illness and dangerousness, the validity of psychiatric predictions of dangei·ousness, has sought to uncover valid predictors of dangerousness, and more recently has focused on the prediction process in practice, The present study falls within the latter category, The aim of the research was twofold: (l) To establish whether State President's Patients CSPDs) evaluated as "dangerous to others" by clinic ians differ significantly from SPDs who have been evaluated as "not dangerous to others", and to identify which factors in the histories of SPDs predict clinicians' evaluations of dangerousness; and (2) to obtain clinicians' opinions about the issue of dangerousness, to establish the _variables which they claim to use to predict dangerousness, and to integrate this material with the data from the first component.

Keywords

Psychology

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