Socio-demographic and clinical characteristics of women who committed murder and their compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospital

The article analyzes the history of women offenders under article 105 of the criminal code (murder) under involuntary treatment of general and/or specialized types in the Irkutsk Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital no. 1 in 1996-2017. We studied in detail representative sample consisting of 55 women. For each patient the questionnaire was filled with the inclusion of sociodemographic characteristics (age, place of residence, education, marital status, and conviction), clinical characteristics and features of the offence (alcohol intoxication, way to kill the victim, hiding the vestiges of a crime, the motives of socially dangerous acts of mental patients). Study of sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of women with socially dangerous acts (article 105 of the Criminal Code), being under compulsory treatment, demonstrated the instability of employment history, family maladaptation, destructive forms of interaction in parental families. The vast number of female murderers suffered from schizophrenia and 78.1% of them were under medical observation. The most frequent subjects of killings were the nearest persons of women (spouses/cohabitants, children). Most of the killings (60%) were carried out according to negative-personality mechanisms, which most common forms were delicts torts related to lack of emotional control. Delusional defense was the most frequent manifestation of productive-psychotic mechanisms to commit socially dangerous acts.