Encephale
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To establish the social, clinical, and forensic differences between murderers suffering from a major mental disorder and murderers without any psychiatric disorder and, in particular, to compare their respective records of psychiatric symptoms and their respective relationship with their victims. ⋯ The main difference between murderers with a major mental disorder and murderers without any mental disorder is the psychopathology of the morbid process which underlies the homicide. Impairment of judgment at the time of the crime should be taken into account. As a clinician, we should focus our attention on general risk factors of violence and homicide (male, young, underprivileged class, abuse of alcohol) and on more specific factors (mental disorder co-morbidities...). To these factors should be added the dynamic characteristics of the meeting of the protagonists.
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This paper presents a survey conducted on a population of multi-handicapped patients and autistic adults hospitalised long term in the Paul Guiraud mental health Hospital in Villejuif France. ⋯ Although autistics are clinically different from multi-handicapped patients, no statistically significant difference was demonstrated in their prescriptions, which implies a similar pharmacological management. It is difficult to clearly distinguish these two populations only according to the type of drugs used and the doses prescribed.