Zeitschrift für forensische Forschung

The Features of the Interrelation between Inward Picture of the Disease and Autobiographical Memory among Offenders with Schizophrenia

Abstract

Dubinsky Alexander Aleksandrovich, Bulygina Vera Gennadievna and Pronicheva Maria Mikhailovna

The results of studies on the interrelation of autobiographical memory with the features of the inward picture of the disease among offenders with schizophrenia. There were examined 17 patients with schizophrenia with criminal history, under compulsory treatment. The comparison group consisted of 17 patients with schizophrenia with prosocial behavior and 18 mentally healthy individuals without criminal history. The following techniques aimed to study the inward picture of disease were used: the types of attitude towards disease, symptom checklist-90-revised, life-line (for studying the autobiographical memory), metaphor of the past, functions of autobiographical memory, the questionnaire of self-attitude and balanced inventory of desirable responding. Specific interrelationships between the types of attitude to the disease and perceived symptoms with the peculiarities of functioning of autobiographical memory were revealed. It was found that patients have less realistic possibilities of consciousness with reduced mediation of autobiographical memory representations of the disease at the higher level of severity of distress due to the perceived symptoms and to the less realistic and adaptive types of attitude to disease. It was discovered that offenders with schizophrenia are characterized by the predominance of negative perceptions of past experience, the fragmentation of attitude to disease with low awareness of their symptoms, which is associated with a lower contribution to the mediation of ideas about the disease of functional constructs of autobiographical memory.