Female Residents with Psychopathy in a High-Security Italian Hospital

Before its closure on April 1, 2015, the Castiglione delle Stiviere was the only maximum-security hospital in Italy that admitted women. In this context, the investigators examined factors related to psychopathy that were thought to be gender specific. Several prior investigations have reported a significant correlation between psychopathy and borderline personality disorder, a disorder thought to represent the phenotypical expression of psychopathy in women. The purpose of this research was to identify psychopathological and phenotypical gender-specific factors that are associated with psychopathy in women. The data appear consistent with that found in the recent international literature and also highlight the different phenotypical manifestation of psychopathy in the two genders. Whereas in males psychopathy is associated with antisocial personality disorder, in females psychopathy is associated with borderline personality disorder.