Psychopathy

Psychopathy is a disease of the mind, in which the psychological state of someone has emotional or behavioral problems serious enough to require psychiatric evaluation. However, the ongoing debate of the appropriate measures to access psychopaths has been put under scrutiny. Vincent & Edens (2006) reviewed a meta-analysis of studies to decide the likelihood that psychopathic individuals will harm others. The diagnosis of psychopathology is crucial in assessing their release to the community, however many factors intervene in predicting things like recidivism or release.

Personally I agree with Vincent and Eden (2006) that it is hard to predict psychopath’s behaviors. Ultimately they concluded that PCL-R or other measures were not sufficient to understand psychopath’s future violent behaviors. So what can we do to make this instrument more useful? Since the PCL-R looked at twenty items and their scores as a function of the age. Perhaps the socially deviant behaviors it accesses, such as impulsivity and irresponsibility that usually decreases with age can be characteristics that professionals can work with. I agree with Vincent and Eden (2006) that it is difficult to know psychopaths future behavior, therefore we need to evaluate what changes need to be made to aid mental professionals in diagnosing psychopaths. I think that using indirect measures like past violent activity and checking with other people who know them could be useful. However, are mental health professionals implementing appropriate therapies when the psychopath’s in their care? I understand that rehabilitation may not solve the problem but for it to be more successful it should implement these three values. First they should match the level of treatment to the risk that the subject will offend again. Second every subject have a set of problems that need to be addressed, the treatment program should look at both personal and criminal issues. Third, it is important to motivate the subject to engage in the rehabilitation program. By having rehabilitation programs more suited to the psychopath’s needs, psychologists can then precede using behavioral intervention techniques to reconstruct the cognitive thought processes.

Vincent and Edens (2006) stated that the interaction