The American Journal of Psychiatry published an article this month entitled, “Association of Poor Childhood Fear Conditioning and Adult Crime.” I found it very interesting. Most previous studies looking at young children and whether they later became criminals have examined psychosocial factors of childhood, not neurodevelopmental ones as this one did.
Researchers assessed the fear response of 1,795 children at age 3. A shrill sound was administered, and the sweating response (indicating a fear reaction) was measured. Twenty years later, using court records, the researchers tracked down 137 of the study participants who had committed serious crimes. The young criminals had shown an absence of fear at age 3 whereas 274 non-criminal study participants had shown normal fear reactions.
Although a definite cause-and-effect relationship of the lack of fear in childhood and the later development of criminality cannot be made, this study does provide additional evidence that abnormal brain development puts children at risk of later criminal behavior.
So, other than this academic point, why does this matter? Read more…
Categories: correctional psychiatry, criminality Tags: American Journal of Psychiatry, crime, criminal behavior, criminality, Dr. Yu Gao, early childhood interventions, fear, fear conditioning, fear response, neurodevelopment, offenders
I’ve been following this tragic event both in the popular news media and in the blogs of fellow physicians. I have never examined the alleged killer and do not want to speculate about why he might have decided to what he is said to have done.
Having said that, though, I am finding some of the speculation to be rather bizarre. I was particularly surprised by a post by Kevin Pho (KevinMD.com): “Did Nidal Malik Hasan suffer from compassion fatigue or secondary traumatization?”
I’ve never heard of a mental health professional developing PTSD and killing people as a result of working with trauma victims.
I’m sure we’ll learn more about this case as the story unfolds. In the meantime, the speculation will continue…
Med schools
and teaching hospitals always seem to be located in dangerous neighborhoods. My school was no exception.
One night many years ago, I was in the area near the med school with some fellow medical students. We were in a sports bar around 10 p.m. on a Friday night. I was out of cash. A couple of businesses down from the bar was a convenience store with an ATM. As I approached the ATM, a tall man with an intimidating appearance walked up directly behind me, obviously invading my personal space. It didn’t take much logical thinking or intuition to know that he was not simply waiting politely behind me for his turn to use the ATM. I was going to be his ATM. But, I didn’t want that to happen. Read more…
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