Psychiatric problems in children with frontal, central and temporal lobe epilepsy

Biopsychosocial characteristics of children who later murder: a prospective study

The authors document the childhood neuropsychiatric and family characteristics of nine male subjects who were clinically evaluated as adolescents and were later arrested for murder. Those subjects are compared with 24 incarcerated delinquents who did not go on to commit violent offenses. The future murderers displayed a constellation of biopsychosocial characteristics that included psychotic symptoms, major neurological impairment, a psychotic first-degree relative, violent acts during childhood, and severe physical abuse. The authors relate this combination of factors to prediction of violence and discuss ethical issues that are involved in intervention to prevent violence.

Multiple influences on deviant behaviour in children with epilepsy

Summary. A detailed parametric study has been made of data concerning epilepsy in 118 children. Thirty-nine items of behaviour disorder, and eighteen items of parental attitudes and behaviour have been subjected to separate principal components analyses. The resulting components, together with a number of neurological and environmental variables, have been correlated. A multiple regression analysis has been carried out using the chief component of behaviour disorder as a dependent variable. This exercise indicates that both social and neurological variables are correlated with aggressive behaviour, and are independent of one another. The usefulness of this kind of study for solving the problem of integrating the approaches of sociology, psychology and biology in the study of social behaviour is discussed.