[Paranoid personality disorder and criminal offense]

Area of Science:

• Forensic Psychiatry
• Criminology
• Psychopathology

Background:

• Existing research on paranoia and crime focuses solely on delusional paranoid disorder.
• Subjects with single paranoid personality disorder (PPD) are frequently encountered in forensic settings.
• This study addresses the gap in understanding the criminal behavior of individuals with PPD without delusional disorder.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe offenses committed by individuals with single PPD.
• To compare these offenses with those committed by individuals with PPD and delusional disorder.
• To test the hypothesis of comparable criminological profiles between the two groups.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis of 106 subjects with PPD over 17 years of forensic assessment.
• Categorization into two groups: single PPD and PPD with delusional disorder.
• Offense categorization and statistical analysis using SAS software (alpha risk <0.01).

Main Results:

• Significant differences in offense types were observed between the groups (P=0.0003).
• Delusional PPD subjects committed primarily verbal/physical violence, including homicide (44%), often targeting a specific persecutor.
• Single PPD subjects exhibited a broader spectrum of offenses, with sexual offenses (35% rape) and attempted murder (38%) being as frequent as homicide.

Conclusions:

• Single PPD is associated with a diverse range of offenses, including sexual violence, unlike the more focused violence in delusional PPD.
• This study is the first to detail the medico-legal behavior of single PPD.
• Findings underscore the criminological risk posed by PPD, even without a co-occurring delusional disorder.