Correlation between aggressive behavior and sociodemographic characteristics in patients with schizophrenia at a psychiatry outpatient clinic

Criminal behavior and mental illness in the Arab world

“…Afterward, the full‐length of the remaining 60 articles were evaluated for eligibility, and 40 articles were excluded. Eventually, a total of 20 publications met the inclusion criteria and were included in the current review (Figure 1) [29–48].…”

“…Regarding the marital status, El‐hadidy showed that the prevalence of singleness was significantly higher among individuals with schizophrenia who had committed a homicide (80.5%) than those who did not commit a homicide (64.4%) [39]. Similarly, Refaat et al [43] found a positive correlation between aggression and being unmarried among individuals with schizophrenia. Among individual with schizophrenia who had committed a homicide, Gholoum et al [38] found that single and separated subjects represented 48% ( n = 12) and 32% ( n = 8) of individuals with schizophrenia, respectively.…”

“…Despite being exclusively focused on schizophrenia, the four included articles demonstrated significant methodological heterogeneity. The first study compared murderers with schizophrenia with nonmentally ill murderers; the second compared individuals with schizophrenia who had committed a homicide with individuals with schizophrenia who had not committed a homicide; the third compared individuals with schizophrenia with nonmentally ill individuals, regardless of the presence of criminal records; the fourth compared offenders with schizophrenia with reoffenders with schizophrenia [38,39,43,44].…”

“…El-hadidy identified low educational level as a predictor of homicide, where more than half of individuals with schizophrenia who had committed a homicide (54.7%) received less than 6 years of education as compared with 39% among individuals with schizophrenia without homicide [39]. However, Refaat et al [43] found that higher educational levels were positively correlated with aggression.…”

“…Nonetheless, this should be interpreted with caution as substance use was significantly higher among offenders with schizophrenia (60%) than offenders without a mental illness (38%) [38]. In the study conducted by Refaat et al [43], Modified Overt Aggressive Scale (MOAS) demonstrated that all patients (patients with schizophrenia and patients free of mental illness) showed a variable degree of aggression [43]. El-hadidy suggested that homicidal behavior in schizophrenia is likely to be mediated by interrelated factors.…”