Clinical Appraisals of Individual Differences in Treatment Responsivity Among Patients With Psychopathy: A Consensual Qualitative Research Study

This study addressed which factors expert clinicians consider crucial in successful completion versus dropout in the mandatory forensic psychiatric treatment of psychopathic patients in the Netherlands. Eleven clinicians were interviewed about patient characteristics, treatment (provider) characteristics, and other factors they deemed associated with failure (transfer to another facility) or completion. The interviews were coded using the guidelines of Consensual Qualitative Research (CQR). Overall, extremely high scores on Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL-R) Facets 1 (Deceitful Interpersonal Style) and 2 (Defective Affective Experience) were thought to impede treatment retention, particularly by its negative impact on motivation and therapeutic relationship. Older patients, those with a prosocial network, and/or patients with comorbid borderline traits appeared to fare better. Treatment success was deemed more likely when treatment goals and expectations are stipulated in a concrete fashion, when an extended and gradual resocialization trajectory is offered, and the treatment team is expert, cohesive, and stable.</p

Using MMPI–2–RF Correlates to Elucidate the PCL–R and Its Four Facets in a Sample of Male Forensic Psychiatric Patients

This study documents the associations between the MMPI-2-RF (Ben-Porath & Tellegen, 2008 ) scale scores and the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R; Hare, 2003 ) facet scores in a forensic psychiatric sample. Objectives were to determine how the MMPI-2-RF scales might enhance substantive understanding of the nature of the 4 PCL-R facets and to discern possible implications for the treatment of psychopathic patients. A sample of 127 male forensic psychiatric offenders admitted to a Dutch forensic psychiatric hospital completed the PCL-R and the MMPI-2. Exploratory stepwise regression analyses assessed the prediction of the PCL-R total and its facet scores from MMPI-2-RF scales at its 3 hierarchical levels. Conceptually meaningful results emerged at each level of the MMPI-2-RF hierarchy, including several consistent differences between predictor sets across the facets. Interestingly, ideas of persecution (RC6) was a specific predictor of PCL-R Facet 2, a facet noted for its association with treatment failure. Results are compared and contrasted to the extant body of empirical work to date, and some tentative clinical implications are offered

An ALM model for pension funds using integrated chance constraints

We discuss integrated chance constraints in their role of short-term risk constraints in a strategic ALM model for Dutch pension funds. The problem is set up as a multistage recourse model, with special attention for modeling short-term risk prompted by the development of new guidelines by the regulating authority for Dutch pension funds. The paper concludes with a numerical illustration of the importance of such short-term risk constraints

Treatment responsiveness of replicated psychopathy profiles.

Theory and accumulating data suggest systematic heterogeneity among offenders with psychopathic traits. Several empirical investigations converge on the nature of subtypes, but little is known about differences in treatment responsivity. We have used the 4-facet model of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) to provide a framework for detecting subtypes. The present study used the full range of PCL-R scores in a sample of male violent offenders (N = 190) to replicate subtypes found in a partly overlapping sample by Neumann, Vitacco, and Mokros (2016), using Latent Profile Analysis (LPA), and subsequently to examine potential differences in treatment responsivity. Four subtypes emerged. Within the prototypical psychopathic group, the distinction between intent-to-treat and completers was crucial. Prototypical psychopathic offenders were significantly more likely to drop out, but completers appeared to proceed through the different phases of treatment in much the same way as the other groups. Clearly, more research is needed to elucidate treatment interfering mechanisms and their associated patient characteristics, particularly for the prototypical psychopathic group. Developing therapeutic strategies to improve treatment compliance is a necessary step in the development of specialized treatment programs for these difficult patients

Do We Hold Males and Females to the Same Standard? A Measurement Invariance Study on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised

ABSTRACT Psychopathy in females has been understudied. Extant data on gender comparisons using the predominant measure of assessment in clinical practice, the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), points to a potential lack of measurement invariance (MI). If indeed the instrument does not perform equally (well) in both genders, straightforward comparison of psychopathy scores in males and females is unwarranted. Using a sample of female and male forensic patients (N ¼ 110 and N ¼ 147 respectively), we formally tested for MI in a structural equation modeling framework. We found that the PCL-R in its current form does not attain full MI. Four items showed threshold biases and particularly Factor 2 (the Social Deviance Factor) is gender biased. Based on our findings, it seems reasonable to expect that specific scoring adjustments might go a long way in bringing about more equivalent assessment of psychopathic features in men and women. Only then can we begin to meaningfully compare the genders on the prevalence, structure, and external correlates of psychopath

Processing second-order stochastic dominance models using cutting-plane representations

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the links below. Copyright @ 2011 Springer-VerlagSecond-order stochastic dominance (SSD) is widely recognised as an important decision criterion in portfolio selection. Unfortunately, stochastic dominance models are known to be very demanding from a computational point of view. In this paper we consider two classes of models which use SSD as a choice criterion. The first, proposed by Dentcheva and Ruszczyński (J Bank Finance 30:433–451, 2006), uses a SSD constraint, which can be expressed as integrated chance constraints (ICCs). The second, proposed by Roman et al. (Math Program, Ser B 108:541–569, 2006) uses SSD through a multi-objective formulation with CVaR objectives. Cutting plane representations and algorithms were proposed by Klein Haneveld and Van der Vlerk (Comput Manage Sci 3:245–269, 2006) for ICCs, and by Künzi-Bay and Mayer (Comput Manage Sci 3:3–27, 2006) for CVaR minimization. These concepts are taken into consideration to propose representations and solution methods for the above class of SSD based models. We describe a cutting plane based solution algorithm and outline implementation details. A computational study is presented, which demonstrates the effectiveness and the scale-up properties of the solution algorithm, as applied to the SSD model of Roman et al. (Math Program, Ser B 108:541–569, 2006).This study was funded by OTKA, Hungarian National Fund for Scientific Research, project 47340; by Mobile Innovation Centre, Budapest University of Technology, project 2.2; Optirisk Systems, Uxbridge, UK and by BRIEF (Brunel University Research Innovation and Enterprise Fund)

Terrestrial Implications of Cosmological Gamma-Ray Burst Models

The observation by the BATSE instrument on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory that gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are distributed isotropically around the Earth but nonuniformly in distance has led to the widespread conclusion that GRBs are most likely to be at cosmological distances, making them the most luminous sources known in the Universe. If bursts arise from events that occur in normal galaxies, such as neutron star binary inspirals, then they will also occur in our Galaxy about every hundred thousand to million years. The gamma-ray flux at the Earth due to a Galactic GRB would far exceed that from even the largest solar flares. The absorption of this radiation in the atmosphere would substantially increase the stratospheric nitric oxide concentration through photodissociation of N$_2$, greatly reducing the ozone concentration for several years through NO$_x$ catalysis, with important biospheric effects due to increased solar ultraviolet flux. A nearby GRB may also leave traces in anomalous radionuclide abundances.Comment: uuencoded, gzip-ed postscript; 6 pages; submitted to ApJ Letter