Mortality among mentally disordered offenders: a community based follow-up study.
BACKGROUND
Follow-up information about outcome for hospitalized mentally disordered offenders (MDO) is necessary for evaluation and improvement in quality of forensic psychiatric care.


OBJECTIVE
A study was undertaken to estimate the standard mortality rate (SMR) of a population based sample of people sentenced to forensic psychiatric care.


METHODS
All MDOs in Orebro County, Sweden, discharged from a forensic psychiatric treatment unit between 1992 and 1999 were identified (n = 46). The variables were gender, age, offence, diagnosis and duration of admission. Case linkage was made with the National Cause-of-Death register. Median follow-up time was 53 months (0-93).


RESULTS
The sample yielded a significantly elevated SMR 13.4 (95% CI 4.35-31.3) times higher than that in the general population, mostly due to suicide.


CONCLUSIONS
The cohort size is small but representative, and it provides data from an additional country for the growing international pool confirming the high risk of premature, generally self-inflicted death among MDOs. Resettlement and rehabilitation services for them may need to take as much account of mortality risk as that of re-offending.
Psychiatric Research Centre, University Hospital Orebro, Sweden.
Tabita
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Björk
Per
P
Lindqvist
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D002423:Cause of Death; D005260:Female; D005555:Forensic Psychiatry; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric; D006783:Hospitals, State; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D028642:Persons with Psychiatric Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010351:Patient Discharge / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016012:Poisson Distribution; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011329:Prisoners / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012042:Registries; D013405:Suicide / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D013548:Sweden / Q000453:epidemiology