ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the relationship between mental disorder and crime and deals with the construct of psychopathy and its relationship to offending. The two systems most frequently used for classifying mental disorders are the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) manual of the World Health Organization. A number of mental disorders are grouped in the DSM–5 under the broad category of schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. These include schizophrenia, delusional disorder, brief psychotic disorder, schizophreniform disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. One personality disorder that many will be familiar with through depictions in the media, but which does not feature in the DSM, is psychopathy. There have been a number of studies that have used samples of mentally disordered individuals, usually drawn from psychiatric hospitals, to see whether the prevalence of offending is higher among this group of individuals than in the general population.
