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Stalking is a problem behaviour in which one individual imposes repeated unwanted contacts or communications on another, creating distress and fear. A classification is provided as a guide to assessing and managing stalkers, their victims, advising the courts and organisations, and for mental health professionals, personal safety. Threats to kill need to be taken seriously. But how seriously given such threats are often part of the common currency of everyday speech? The management of sexual offending is a specialised component of forensic psychiatry. The development and maintenance of expertise and adherence to expert guidelines requires collaboration and networking, as well as effective working with other disciplines. Forensic psychiatric assessment of terrorism can be difficult. It may be unclear whether the case actually involves terrorism, let alone what contribution mental disorder might make. Nonetheless, psychiatric assessment of the terrorism offender relies on the same basic principles of good quality assessment utilising a multiagency approach when assessing any complex criminal, or potentially criminal, behaviour involving mental disorder.
Developments in threat assessment, particularly in the area of concerning communications and approaches to public figures, has led to the setting-up in a number of countries of a new style of service for assessing and managing risk to the prominent from the actions of lone individuals. Known as fixated threat assessment centres (FTACs), their central characteristic is that they are jointly staffed by police officers and by psychiatric staff from health services. They are based on the realization that the interests of the prominent in terms of protection overlap with those of the people harassing them in terms of medical care. Research over the last decade has re-established that the majority of those threatening, harassing, or attacking public figures have unmet mental health needs, and that attention to these is often the most effective way of reducing risk, whilst at the same time improving their lot and focusing on treatment, rather than criminalization. The approach has recently been expanded to encompass assessment and intervention in individuals suspected of being radicalised into extreme ideologies and at risk of proceeding to commit terrorist acts.
The rediscovery of the importance of mental illness in the risk assessment and management of those who threaten, approach, and harm public figures has led to a new way of dealing with those that threaten public figures. This approach emphasises the role of “fixation” which may be defined as an intense preoccupation pursued to an abnormally intense degree. It integrates a threat assessment paradigm with the literature on stalking. The need for such an approach was highlighted in research on the prevalence of harassment of public figures. Psychiatry has a key role in this approach which sees mental health clinicians and Police work together in Fixated Threat Assessment Centres (FTACs). An FTAC functions by assessing the level of concern and sharing information to facilitate interventions that are often mental health based. The purpose is not the hopeless task of identifying those who will go on to perpetrate serious violence, rather to intervene in the group they emerge from, to prevent harm. As well as decreasing risk to the persons fixated upon, this approach improves care to the mentally disordered people who harass and threaten them and, in doing so, decreases the likelihood of their criminalization while enhancing their quality of life. As expertise in the area has grown, policing and security agencies in several countries have expanded the FTAC model to cover individuals thought at risk of lone-actor grievance-fueled violence, a term that captures both different forms of mass killing and lone actor terrorism.
Stalking is now a major social and legal issue, as well as a clinical problem for mental health professionals. This absorbing and informative book draws on the authors' extensive experience of working with stalkers and their victims in the clinical setting.Topics covered include:The growing recognition of stalking as an issue of public, legal and scientific concernThe definition, classification and epidemiology of stalkingThe impact on victims, and how this may be reducedSame-gender stalking, stalking by proxy, workplace stalking, and the stalking of professionals, such as doctors and teachersThe association of stalking with physical and sexual assaultAnti-stalking laws internationallySupport and practical advice for victimsAssessing and managing the stalkerWith many case histories, and an approach that is at once scholarly and highly practical, this will be the definitive guide and reference for anyone with a professional or academic interest in this complex behaviour.
This overview examines the nature, prevalence, and impact of child sexual abuse. Associations and potential risk factors are identified, thus showing that child sexual abuse is not randomly distributed through the population. Finally, we discuss the ways in which clinicians and researchers have conceptualised the impact of child sexual abuse. A social and developmental model is outlined.
Stalking has moved from being a novel area for study to become a core area of concern for mental health professionals, lawyers and other members of the criminal justice system. It has emerged as a significant social problem which not only commands considerable public attention but is now, in many jurisdictions, a specific form of criminal offence. This new edition brings the reader completely up-to-date with the explosion in published research and clinical studies in the field, and covers new issues such as cyberstalking, stalking health professionals, stalking in the workplace, female stalkers, juvenile stalkers, stalking celebrities, evaluating risk in the stalking situation, as well as exploring changes to the legal status of the behaviour. Illustrated with case studies throughout, this is the definitive guide and reference for anyone with professional, academic or other interests in this complex behaviour.
The phenomenon of a Doppelgänger (the double autoscopy; heautoscopy) and its resolution in a psychotic patient is presented. A comparison is made between this experience and the phenomenon as it is described and defined in the literature. The themes of death and disintegration so commonly associated with the Doppelgänger in folklore and literature are highlighted by this patient's experience.
There is an almost total lack of empirical research on stalking among juveniles.
Aims
To examine the characteristics, nature and impacts of stalking by juveniles.
Method
Analysis of consecutive court applications for a restraining order against a juvenile because of stalking behaviours.
Results
A total of 299 juvenile stalkers were identified. The majority were male (64%) and their victims predominantly female (69%). Most pursued a previously known victim (98%), favouring direct means of contact via unwanted approaches (76%) and telephone calls or text messaging (67%). Threats (75%) and physical and sexual assaults (54%) were common. The contexts for juvenile stalking involved an extension of bullying (28%), retaliation for a perceived harm (22%), a reaction to rejection (22%), sexual predation (5%) and infatuation (2%).
Conclusions
Juvenile stalking is characterised by direct, intense, overtly threatening and all too often violent forms of pursuit. The seriousness that is afforded to adult forms of stalking should similarly apply to this behaviour among juveniles given the even greater rates of disruption to the victim's life and risks of being attacked.