Forensic psychiatric treatment evaluation: The clinical evaluation of treatment progress with repeated forensic routine outcome monitoring measures

The likelihood of recidivism is considered to be the most important outcome measure in forensic psychiatry. Therefore, forensic psychiatric treatment focuses on the reduction of the risk of recidivism by treating dynamic risk and protective factors, aiming to reduce risk factors while enhancing protective factors during treatment. The goal of this study is to assess treatment progress with the Instrument for Forensic Treatment Evaluation (IFTE) in a Dutch forensic psychiatric centre (n=240). Latent Class Analysis was conducted to reconfirm previously found patient profiles. Patient profiles were based on risk factors, psychopathology, and offence type. Repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted to assess treatment progress for the whole patient group, for high and low risk patients, and for patients who had been in treatment for a period longer and shorter than one year. Latent Class Analysis has not reconfirmed the previously found profiles, therefore a repeated measures ANOVA was not conducted on profile level. On group-level, no significant progress was found. Though, patients with low protective behaviour, low resocialization scores, and high problem behaviour scores displayed significant treatment progress. Patients with low problematic behaviour showed a significant increase of problematic behaviour and patients with high protective behaviour a decrease of protective behaviour. Results indicated an interaction effect between time of admission and the factor resocialization skills, however this effect was not found for the other two factors. Results imply that higher risk patients can show more treatment progress than lower risk patients.

Publication year:2018