Mrigendra Das

Royal Darwin Hospital · Department of Psychiatry

Objective: Consider the unique features and challenges of prison psychiatry. Conclusions: A Prison Mental Health Network within the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists would serve many useful functions including improving the quality of mental health services by promoting high clinical standards and ethical practice by psyc...

The article Pharmacological Approaches to Managing Violence and Aggression in Prison Populations: Clinical and Ethical Issues, written by Michael Weightman, Ranjit Kini, Robert Parker and Mrigendra Das, was originally published electronically in SpringerLink on 28 August 2020 without open access.

Aberrations in stress-linked hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis function have been independently associated with schizophrenia, antisocial behaviour and childhood maltreatment. In this study, we examined pituitary volume (PV) in relation to childhood maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect) in men (i) with schizophrenia and a history o...

Violence and aggression are common problems encountered in prison, which frequently require clinical intervention. This increased prevalence is partially attributable to the high morbidity of psychiatric and personality disorders in prison inmates. As prisons are non-therapeutic environments, the provision of clinical care becomes more complex. Thi...

Objectives: To assess whether there are shared or divergent (a) cognitive and (b) emotion processing characteristics among violent individuals with antisocial personality disorder and/or schizophrenia, diagnoses which are commonly encountered at the interface of mental disorder and violence. Cognition and emotion processing are incorporated into m...

Purpose Substance misuse is widely prevalent in mentally disordered offenders and is linked with violence and offending behaviour. There is however, a scarcity of literature dedicated to investigating substance misuse and its clinical correlates in relation to patients detained within high secure hospital settings. This paper aims to investigate t...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence of stress and burnout among forensic mental health professionals (FMH). Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of the available literature accessed by relevant databases was conducted. Findings This study concluded that FMH suffer from moderate levels of both stress an...

Evidence suggests violence amongst those with psychosis is not aetiologically homogeneous, and that a large proportion of those who engage in violent behaviour have a comorbid antisocial personality disorder. Initial investigations indicate that this subgroup has distinct historical and neuropsychological characteristics, which may indicate diverse...

Background: Sexual offending is a significant international issue causing long-term consequences for victims, perpetrators and society. Aims: The purpose of this study was to review the existing research data assessing the efficacy of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone agonists for treating adult, male, sexual offenders. Method: The method of thi...

Background The majority of research studies on medical student attitudes toward psychiatry focus on influencing factors and the medical school experience. This study evaluates the effectiveness of a one-day visit to a high secure forensic psychiatric unit on medical students’ attitudes towards psychiatry and also assesses career intentions and the...

Background: High-security hospital patients are often complex in presentation and are characterized by treatment resistance, medication nonadherence and history of violence. Paliperidone is licensed both as an oral and depot antipsychotic medication in the treatment of schizophrenia. Clinical trials have shown that paliperidone depot is well toler...

AIM To investigate factors predicting treatment completion and treatment outcome of the Reasoning and Rehabilitation Mental Health Programme (R&R2MHP) cognitive skills programme for mentally disordered offenders. METHODS Secondary analysis of data previously obtained from 97 male patients who were sectioned and detained under the United Kingdom Me...

Objective: This case report describes a forensic psychiatric patient presenting with treatment-resistant schizophrenia and serious interpersonal violence complicated by poor adherence to oral medication who was treated successfully with two concurrent long-acting depot antipsychotics. Method: Treatment response was measured for a 6-month period...

Seclusion may be harmful and traumatic to patients, detrimental to therapeutic relationships, and can result in physical injury to staff. Further, strategies to reduce seclusion have been identified as a potential method of improving cost-effectiveness of psychiatric services. However, developing alternative strategies to seclusion can be difficult...

Objectives: We aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a day visit in changing attitudes towards a high-security forensic psychiatric hospital, with regard to the current recruitment difficulties in psychiatry. Methods: Broadmoor Hospital, a UK high-security psychiatric hospital, runs day visits for medical students, led by doctors. At the beg...

Introduction High-security hospital patients are often complex in presentation characterised by treatment resistance, medication non-concordance and history of violence. Paliperidone is licensed as both an oral and depot antipsychotic for the treatment of schizophrenia. Whilst there is data for the effectiveness of paliperidone palmitate (PP), ther...

This systematic review aimed to examine whether neurobiological methods, or other methods independent of clinical judgment, have been investigated to assist decision making in forensic mental health services and, if so, whether this may be a useful strategy for predicting outcomes. OVID-Medline, Embase, and PsychInfo (inception-January 2015) were s...

Objectives To analyze antipsychotic prescribing patterns in a UK high security hospital (HSH) that treats seriously violent men with either schizophrenia or personality disorder and examine how different groups consented to treatment and prescribing for metabolic conditions. We hypothesized that there would be high prevalence of antipsychotic polyp...

Aims and Hypothesis The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MS) in patients with schizophrenia varies between 19% and 53%, much higher than the general population. Schizophrenia is the most common diagnosis in secure forensic hospitals. The aim of the presenting study was to investigate the prevalence of MS in a high secure psychiatric hospital and t...

Introduction There is mounting evidence that music therapy can be beneficial in mental disorders. Whilst there is much literature on it’s role in psychiatry, there is little research on the place of music education and moreover, in a forensic setting. Objectives To determine how patients with a history of serious violence and difficulties in engag...

Introduction: Asenapine is a novel, recently introduced antipsychotic drug. It has a unique receptor profile and it is licensed in the UK for the treatment of bipolar-affective disorder. However, there is some evidence for its effectiveness in schizophrenia and it is licensed for schizophrenia treatment in a number of countries. Significant number...

A number of studies have demonstrated the anti-aggressive properties of clozapine in schizophrenia and its positive effect in borderline personality disorder. There is no published literature on the treatment of antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) with clozapine. We present a case series of 7 patients with primary ASPD and high psychopathic trai...

Clozapine is used in the management of treatment-resistant schizophrenia and is effective in reducing aggression; however a subgroup of patients is poorly responsive. For violent patients in this group, there is limited literature on the use of strategies to augment clozapine with other agents. Here we present a case series of 6 schizophrenia patie...

Objective: Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and schizophrenia, as well as childhood abuse, are associated with violent behaviour and show marked volumetric reduction in the anterior cingulate (AC), a brain region implicated in regulation of violence through its involvement in decision making, empathy, impulse control, and emotion regulation....

Background: Oral olanzapine is a well-established treatment for patients suffering from schizophrenia. Advantages of depot olanzapine may include improved compliance. However, it is expensive, causes metabolic side effects, and carries a risk of postinjection syndrome. Clinical trials have shown olanzapine pamoate to be effective, but further work...

Aims and method To illustrate the clinical benefit of polygraph testing for mentally disordered sex offenders at a high secure psychiatric hospital. It is a retrospective review of two patients' case notes and of interviews with clinicians. Post Conviction Sex Offender Testing (PSCOT) was used to assist these patients in making disclosures regardin...

Objective: Violent behaviour has been associated with presence of certain mental disorders, most notably antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and schizophrenia, childhood abuse, and multiple brain abnormalities. This study examined for the first time, to the authors' knowledge, the role of psychosocial deprivation (PSD), including childhood phys...

We describe the benefits of using triptorelin, a gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) analogue in seven patients who were treated in a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in England. This case series was a retrospective review of medical case notes and interviews with treating clinicians. All patients received a long-acting depot injection of tr...

Introduction Dysfunctional impulsivity reflects ‘recklessness without deliberation and evaluation of consequences’ and has negative consequences whereas functional impulsivity reflects ‘rapid responding to situational demands in order to maximise one's circumstances’ and often has positive consequences (1). Objective To examine the functional brai...

Purpose – High-secure hospital patients often have complex presentations that are marked by co-morbidity, violence, histories of poor concordance with oral medication, and treatment resistance. The ability to give a long-acting medication with a low propensity for extra pyramidal side effects is of potential value to clinicians treating these patie...

Aggression and violent acts have been linked with impulsive responding. We investigated whether impulsive personality trait, especially suggestive of dysfunctional impulsivity (i.e. fast and inaccurate responding where this is non-optimal), is associated with a history of seriously violent behaviour and specific brain deficits in schizophrenia. Twe...

Contemporary theories and evidence implicate defective emotion regulation in violent behaviour. The two psychiatric illnesses most implicated in violence are schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder (APD). This study examined behavioural and brain abnormalities in violent men with schizophrenia or APD during anticipatory fear. Fifty-three...

In this study, response inhibition and associated neural activation during a motor inhibition paradigm were investigated in (i) men with antisocial personality disorder (APD) with a history of violence (n = 14), (ii) men with schizophrenia with a history of violence (n = 12), (iii) men with schizophrenia without a history of violence (n = 12), and...

Personality is known to influence cognitive and affective functioning as well as the risk of psychiatric disorders. Exploration of the neurobiological correlates of personality traits has the potential to enhance understanding of their significance in development of related psychopathological states. The authors examined the association between ind...

Contemporary theories and evidence implicate frontal lobe dysfunction in violent behaviour as well as in schizophrenia. We applied functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate and compare brain activation during an 'n-back' working memory task in groups of men with (i) schizophrenia and a history of serious physical violence (VS; n=1...

Brain abnormalities are found in association with antisocial personality disorder and schizophrenia, the two mental disorders most implicated in violent behaviour. Structural magnetic resonance imaging was used to investigate the whole brain, cerebellum, temporal lobe, lateral ventricles, caudate nucleus, putamen, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala an...

Schizophrenia patients display an excessive rate of smoking compared to the general population. Nicotine increases acoustic prepulse inhibition (PPI) in animals as well as healthy humans, suggesting that smoking may provide a way of restoring deficient sensorimotor gating in schizophrenia. No previous study has examined the neural mechanisms of the...

We investigated whether prepulse inhibition of the startle response is reduced in siblings of schizophrenia patients compared to age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Nineteen unaffected biological siblings and 19 controls were assessed on prepulse inhibition by monaural and binaural acoustic prepulse stimuli, with the startle stimuli always prese...

Previous research has reported cognitive impairment in patients with schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder (APD), the two psychiatric illnesses most implicated in violent behaviour. Previous studies have focused on either group exclusively, and have been criticized for procedural inadequacies and sample heterogeneity. The authors invest...

Violent behaviour has a strong association with antisocial personality disorder (APD) and schizophrenia. Although developments in the understanding of socio-environmental factors associated with violence should not be ignored, advances in prevention and treatment of violent behaviour would benefit by improved understanding of its neurobiological an...

The objective of this study was to investigate neuropsychological impairment as a genetically mediated risk indicator for schizophrenia while accounting for prevalence of schizotypy signs/symptoms in siblings. Cognitive functioning in 25 individuals with schizophrenia, 25 unaffected siblings and 25 unrelated healthy controls, was assessed using neu...

Smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) and antisaccade deficits have been proposed as endophenotypes in the search for schizophrenia genes. We assessed these measures in 24 schizophrenia patients, 24 of their healthy siblings, and 24 healthy controls closely matched to the siblings. Between-group differences were assessed using a random effects regress...

Neurological soft signs (NSS) are nonspecific indicators of brain dysfunction that are found to be in excess and correlated with cognitive dysfunction and psychopathology in patients with schizophrenia. The aim of the study was to examine whether the severity of NSS determines the efficacy of atypical antipsychotics in schizophrenia. Forty-three pa...

Smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) and antisaccade deficits are observed in the schizophrenia spectrum and have been used to study the pathophysiology as well as the genetic basis of this condition. The neurotransmitter acetylcholine has been implicated in a number of cognitive processes thought to underlie SPEM and antisaccade performance. This st...

To elucidate the neural correlates of cognitive effects of nicotine, we examined behavioral performance and blood oxygenation level-dependent regional brain activity, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, during a parametric "n-back" task in healthy nonsmoking males after the administration of nicotine (12 microg/kg body weight) or saline. N...

Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle response refers to a reduction in response to a strong stimulus (pulse) if this is preceded shortly by a weak non-startling stimulus (prepulse). Consistent with theories of deficiencies in early stages of information processing, PPI is found to be reduced in patients with schizophrenia. Atypical antipsychoti...

There is conflicting evidence of a relationship between changes in symptoms and cognitive functioning in schizophrenia. This study investigated longitudinal changes in psychopathology and cognitive functioning in chronic schizophrenia utilising three different dimensional models of symptomatology. Sixty-two patients diagnosed with DSM-IV schizophre...

Incidents of aggression and violence in severe mental disorders like psychosis, personality disorders and substance misuse disorders are higher than in the general population. Recent advances in neuroimaging techniques may help to predict violent behaviour in mentally ill individuals and to identify anomalies in brain functioning that may be amenab...

The critical flicker fusion threshold (CFFT) is thought to index alertness and cortical arousal. Sedative drugs reduce CFFT while psychostimulants increase it. Procyclidine is an anticholinergic that is used to control the extrapyramidal side-effects of antipsychotics in schizophrenia. This study examined the effects of clinically relevant doses of...

With the population of India recently increasing to over 1 billion, the need for personnel to cater to the health services is ever increasing. This article will touch upon various aspects of psychiatric training in India and briefly cover some aspects of psychiatric practice and services in the

Life events are associated with relapse in schizophrenia. However, the role and interplay of marriage and social support have not been explored in research on schizophrenia, especially stable patients. Life events and social support were assessed in two groups comprising 30 married and an equal number of unmarried patients of schizophrenia. The tim...

Life events are associated with relapse in schizophrenia. However, the role and interplay of marriage and social support have not been explored in research on schizophrenia, especially stable patients. Life events and social support were assessed in two groups comprising 30 married and an equal number of unmarried patients of schizophrenia. The tim...

In this study, retrospective assessment of life events over a period of one year was carried out in two groups of schizophrenic patients. Each group had 30 patients. One group comprised "relapsing" schizophrenics and the other consisted of "stable" patients. The group of "relapsing" schizophrenics had experienced a significantly greater number of l...

In-patient management with initial focus on weight restoration for an emaciated young girl with anorexia nervosa is reported. Integrative approach to management of this case yielded gratifying results which are maintained beyond one year after-discharge period.