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Clozapine in Reducing Aggression and Violence in Forensic Populations

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Abstract

Popular media often portray people with a mental illness as being aggressive, violent, and incarcerated as a result of their behavior. Despite exaggeration in the media, risks for some aggressive behaviors are in fact higher in individuals with schizophrenia. This is often the case with influence of comorbid substance use disorders. It is essential that mental health professionals are aware of treatments that may help with attenuating and treating behaviors that contribute to violence, aggression and incarceration. This paper reviews violence and incarceration in individuals with schizophrenia as well as recommendations, guidelines and benefits for the use of clozapine in this population. Clozapine remains one of the most underutilized evidence-based medications available in the psychiatric arena in the United States. It is a viable and recommended option in the forensic population and it may be helpful on the path to recovery as well as bring substantial savings to the criminal justice system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by grants NIMH R01 MH102215 (Kelly PI) and R01 MH105571-01 (Kelly PI).

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Correspondence to Deanna L. Kelly.

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This work was supported in part by grants NIMH R01 MH102215 (Kelly PI) and R01 MH105571–01 (Kelly PI).

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

Dr. Raymond Love owns stock in GlaxoSmithKline. All other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Patchan, K., Vyas, G., Hackman, A.L. et al. Clozapine in Reducing Aggression and Violence in Forensic Populations. Psychiatr Q 89, 157–168 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-017-9521-z

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