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This paper reports on a qualitative study of UK mental health practitioners' experiences of working with the contested condition, dangerous and severe personality disorder (DSPD). Our interviews focused on the issues of treatability, risk assessment and decision-making in multi-disciplinary teams. We discuss the approach of values-based medicine (VBM) as a useful framework for interpreting the data: respondents cited both explicit values (based on occupational training) and implicit values (based on personal beliefs and subjective perceptions). There was evidence of conflicting values -- within individuals, between occupational groups, and between individuals in occupational groups -- which led to widespread uncertainty and caution about whether and how those with 'dangerous' personality disorders could be treated. These disputes were resolved by a 'slide to pragmatism', whereby practitioners, reluctantly acknowledging their own empowerment in the process, sought to make whichever choice was least risky for their own professional reputation, and most pragmatic, given the resources available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visualising how social networks evolve is important in intelligence analysis in order to detect and monitor issues, such as emerging crime patterns or rapidly growing groups of offenders. It remains an open research question how this type of information should be presented for visual exploration. To get a sense of how users work with different types of visualisations, we evaluate a matrix and a node-link diagram in a controlled thinking aloud study. We describe the sense-making strategies that users adopted during explorative and realistic tasks. Thereby, we focus on the user behaviour in switching between the two visualisations and propose a set of nine strategies. Based on a qualitative and quantitative content analysis we show which visualisation supports which strategy better. We find that the two visualisations clearly support intelligence tasks and that for some tasks the combined use is more advantageous than the use of an individual visualisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates a high incidence of offence-related trauma in mentally disordered offenders convicted of violent and sexual offences. The adaptive information processing (AIP) model offers a theoretical framework for understanding the hypothesised relationship between offence-related trauma and reoffending. Evidence suggests that for a sub-population of offenders presenting with offence-related trauma: (1) therapy may retraumatise them, and (2) unresolved trauma severely blocks the positive benefits of talking therapies. Thus, it is postulated that traumatised violent and sexual offenders may be released into the community when they are still at risk of reoffending. A single case study is presented, which describes the application of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) for a sexual offender presenting with offence-related trauma, whose offences occurred in the context of serious mental disorder. The identification of offence-related trauma and subsequent resolution of trauma symptomatology are discussed in regard to effective offender rehabilitation. Furthermore, the idiosyncratic nature of offence-related trauma and the application of the standard EMDR protocol for a single traumatic event are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the vast majority of individuals with a mental disorder do not commit sexual offences, sexual offenders are a significant group within forensic psychiatric populations and command a high level of healthcare resources. Despite this, there is little published research focusing on the offence-specific cognitive styles (e.g. cognitive distortions and implicit theories) of these individuals, limiting understanding of their assessment and treatment needs. The current study aimed to establish whether evidence for the implicit theories identified by researchers of non-mentally disordered child sexual offenders would also be present among a population of high secure psychiatric male sexual offenders. Analysis of interviews with 12 such individuals indicated that the majority of the cognitive distortions articulated by these men could be categorised within existing implicit theory descriptions. The findings are discussed in relation to clinical practice and suggestions for future research with this specific population are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative methods can improve the understanding of the dynamic group processes that occur during interventions with sex offenders and how these might impact upon outcomes. The current study presents themes from post-group interviews with 17 male offender patients referred for group-work on sex offending in a high security hospital. Individual interview transcripts were analysed thematically and five themes were generated: the impact of disclosing offending experiences; essential ingredients of group-work; peer processes; taking on an offender identity; and life after the group. Despite methodological differences between this study and other research, there is clear thematic narrative overlap in findings. This suggests some outcomes in common across interventions for sex offenders, and demonstrates the usefulness of including reflective narratives as a means of gathering information about the impact of group-work for patients with serious offence histories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]