Journal Article

What happens after forensic psychiatric care? A latent class analysis of dimensions of welfare for former forensic psychiatric patients

Sjöström, Stefan, Noland, Ebba, Strandh, Mattias, Klötz Logan, Fia

2023

Overview

Background Mentally disordered offenders are a heterogenous group regarding psychopathology as well as background factors, which makes it likely that more than one stereotypical life situation will apply to all forensic psychiatric patients following discharge. Knowledge about typical life situations would be valuable for optimising support for improving the overall life situation of these individuals. This paper investigates life situations from the perspective of level of living research and resources in terms of different welfare dimensions. Methods Included were all all individuals ( n  = 1146) who had been discharged from forensic psychiatric care in Sweden during 2009–2018 and were included in the Swedish National Forensic Psychiatric Register. Follow-up time varied from 4 to 3644 days, ( m  = 1697, Md  = 1685). Register data from several different registers was combined. Data was analysed using latent class analysis, and multinominal logistic regression analysis investigated what background factors were associated with class membership. Results The results show that there are four subgroups of post-discharge life situations: the high support group, the general psychiatric needs group, the working group, and the family group. The high support group was the largest, representing 54% of the entire sample. There are background factors associated with group membership, including both age at discharge, length of stay in forensic psychiatric care and pre-index crime historical factors. Conclusions This study contributes to the understanding of the post-discharge lives of former forensic psychiatric patients and shows that for several subgroups, negative outcomes are rare. Knowledge about these subgroups could be drawn upon to make informed decisions about in- and outpatient forensic psychiatric care, discharge from forensic psychiatric services, and what support is offered to former forensic psychiatric patients.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Aftercare / Analysis / Care and treatment / Crime / Criminal recidivism / Employment / Forensic psychiatry / Forensic Psychiatry - methods / Forensic science / Humans / Insane, Criminal and dangerous / Investigations / Latent Class Analysis / Level of living / Life situation / Medicine / Medicine & Public Health / Mental disorders / Mental Disorders - psychology / Mental Disorders - therapy / Mentally disordered offender / Outpatients / Patient Discharge / Post-discharge / Practice / Psychiatric patients / Psychiatric services / Psychiatry / Psychology, Pathological / Psychopathology / Psychotherapy / Recidivism / Social Work / Socialt arbete / Welfare dimensions