Crime and Psychiatric Disorders Among Youth in the US Population: An Analysis of the National Comorbidity Survey–Adolescent Supplement

Abstract

Objective Current knowledge regarding psychiatric disorders and crime in youth is limited to juvenile justice and community samples. This study examined relationships between psychiatric disorders and self-reported crime involvement in a sample of youth representative of the US population. Method The National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement (N=10,123; ages 13–17; 2001–2004) was used to examine the relationship between lifetime DSM-IV-based diagnoses, reported crime (property, violent, other), and arrest history. Logistic regression compared the odds of reported crime involvement with specific psychiatric disorders to those without any diagnoses, and examined the odds of crime by psychiatric comorbidity. Results Prevalence of crime was 18.4%. Youth with lifetime psychiatric disorders, compared to no disorders, had significantly greater odds of crime, including violent crime. For violent crime resulting in arrest, conduct disorder (CD; OR=57.5; 95% CI=30.4,108.8), alcohol use disorders (OR=19.5; 95% CI=8.8,43.2), and drug use disorders (OR=16.1; 95% CI=9.3,27.7) had the greatest odds with similar findings for violent crime with no arrest. Psychiatric comorbidity increased the odds of crime. Youth with 3 or more diagnoses (16.0% of population) accounted for 54.1% of those reporting arrest for violent crime. Youth with at least 1 diagnosis committed 85.8% of crime, which was reduced to 67.9% by removing those with CD. Importantly, 88.2% of youth with mental illness report never committing any crime. Conclusion Our findings highlight the importance of improving access to mental health services for youthful offenders in community settings given the substantial associations found between mental illness and crime in this nationally representative epidemiological sample.

Understanding the associations between psychosocial factors and severity of crime in juvenile delinquency: a cross-sectional study

“…CD may increase severity of crime by lack of empathy and unemotional and callous traits, which render youths unable to feel responsible for the consequences of their actions. Our findings are in line with NCS-A analyses, which revealed that youths with CD, AUD and SUD demonstrated greater odds of crime involvement when compared to internalizing disorders such as anxiety and affective disorders 1. We find that it is important to discuss that diagnosis of ODD does not increase severity of crime.…”

Mental illness and violent behavior: the role of dissociation

“…Rates of substance use disorders (including alcohol use disorders and illicit substance use disorders) among self-reported violent offenders range from 20 to 42% [7, 11, 12] (Table 2). Rates of substance use disorders among convicted homicide offenders are lower but still noteworthy, ranging from 1 to 20% [8, 9, 13, 14] (Table 3).…”

“…This is true of mixed clinical population studies [22–25], studies on violence and mental illness in the general population [7, 11, 12, 26], as well as forensic studies of convicted violent offenders [8, 9, 13, 14, 27]. Although DID is missing from almost all the research on mental illness and violence, it gets an inordinate amount of focus in films about mental illness, particularly those in the horror and thriller genres such as Split , Psycho, Fight Club or Secret Window which portray people with dissociative self-states as prone to violence including homicide, or within comedies that poke fun at the “outlandishness” of dissociative self-states, such as Me, Myself and Irene.…”

Adolescent Male Conduct-Disordered Patients in Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Examining the “Limited Prosocial Emotions” Specifier

“…In general population samples, those with drug dependence are more than eight times as likely as others to have had conduct disorder (CD; Nock, Kazdin, Hiripi and Kessler, 2006) and over half of adolescents with CD meet criteria for a substance use disorder (SUD; Coker et al, 2014). Among adolescents whose externalizing behavior problems are severe enough to merit entry into substance use disorder treatment, very high prevalence of CD is generally seen (Dennis et al, 2004), with more than 80% of such youths having CD in some studies (Sakai, Hall, Mikulich-Gilbertson and Crowley, 2004).…”