Yee N1,2
1Justice Health & Forensic Mental Health Network, 2University of New South Wales
Biography:
Dr Natalia Yee is a Senior Research Officer and psychologist at the Justice Health and Forensic Mental Health Network in Sydney, Australia. Dr. She is also a conjoint lecturer at the University of New South Wales. Her main research interest is in the area of forensic mental health including examining the relationship between severe mental illness, especially psychosis, and criminality.
Past research has typically focused on chronic schizophrenia and violence when examining the relationship between psychosis and risk of criminal offending. However, contact with the justice system is not constrained to the most unwell or most violent. The present study is novel as it adopts a clinical staging model, whereby the full spectrum of psychotic illness from the at-risk mental states (ARMS) to the early and chronic stages of psychosis is examined across both violent and non-violent offending. Participants consisted of unselected 291 adult male and female prisoners entering maximum security reception centres in NSW who were administered the Comprehensive Assessment of At Risk Mental States (CAARMS) to ascertain whether they met the Ultra High Risk (UHR), First Episode of Psychosis (FEP) or Established Psychosis (EP) criteria. The presentation will discuss the prevalence and key sociodemographic, clinical and forensic characteristics associated with the different stages of psychosis and also highlight differences between men and women. Preliminary findings indicate that 24% of individuals entering NSW custody met the UHR criteria and another 6% were in their first episode of psychosis, thus reflecting an over-representation of the illness even in its earlier phases. Furthermore, although male prisoners were younger across the criminal justice variables, they were not more likely than female prisoners to have committed violent offending. Implications on the complex illness burden associated with psychosis and the need for early screening and intervention for psychosis for individuals entering custody will also be discussed.