Stockholm Forensic Psychiatry Project (SFPP)

Persons with psychotic spectrum disorders (PSD) commit a small proportion of violent acts, yet this violence leaves victims and families scarred by the unpredictable and unprovoked character of the assaults.

Epidemiological risk factors are known, but the psychological and biological components mediating the risks are largely unexplored.

Sweden is uniquely placed to study these links as individuals are often receiving forensic psychiatric care with long hospital stays, stability and proven free from illicit substances, making study design solid and data interpretation more reliable.

Stockholm Forensic Psychiatry Project studies differences between 3 groups: individuals with PSD disorders with history of violence, those with PSD without such history of violence and healthy controls.

Antecedents such as childhood maltreatment, prior drug use, symptom profiles, emotion dysregulation can be coupled with methylation levels, metabolomics and proteomics with reference to relevant genes, and to functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) of the frontal lobes during working memory task, social cognition measures, autonomic arousal, and computerized test performance.

Once distinguishing markers/measures are identified, a future goal is to examine these prospectively to ascertain if they can predict future violence.

This would enable development of early identification and intervention strategies to decrease the prevalence of violence in  persons with PSD such as schizophrenia.