A Survey on the Prevalence of Psychiatric Disorders among Perpetrators of Murder Referred to the Psychiatric Commission of the Legal Medicine Center of Khorasan Razavi from March 2013 to March 2015

Introduction& The present study was conducted with the aim of determining the prevalence of psychiatric disorders among murderers who were referred to the Psychiatric Commission of the Legal Medicine Office of Mashhad, Khorasan Razavi, for evaluation of their mental status from March 2013 to March 2015.
The research is a descriptive – retrospective one. The studied population in this research were the murderers referred to the Legal Medicine Office of Khorasan Razavi from March 2013 to March 2015. A check-list was designed on the basis of the content of their records and the results declared by the Psychiatric Commision, and the needed quantitative and qualitative data were gathered and recorded, and finally the findings were analyzed using SPSS software and chi2 test.
In this study, a total of 90 cases were investigated that 44 (49.4%) belonged to the first year and 45 (50.6%) to the second year. Fifty five point two percent of them had a history of addiction or continued drug abuse. Among these murderers 17.2 % had a record of psychiatric disease diagnosed by a psychiatrist. 31.8% had a history of taking psychiatric drugs, 17% had a history of psychiatric hospitalization 70.1% were cases of self injury and 28.7% had a history of suicide attempts, while 31.8% had some form of mental disorder and 12.8% were diagnosed as not responsible for his actions.
According to the results of this study 61.7 % of murderers had no major psychiatric disorders but this does not mean that these people are mentally healthy, since they are not sufficiently skilled in communication skills and problem solving, anger control and overall judgment. This points to the need for planning community mental health promotion, life skills training (stress management, anger management, etc.) and prevention of violent crimes such as murder.