Resilience and Successful Community Reintegration among Female Forensic Psychiatric Patients: A Preliminary Investigation

Research on resiliency and recovery in forensic psychiatric patients is still limited. Information pertaining to factors associated with successful community reintegration would contribute to a more comprehensive assessment of functioning and informed treatment planning that fits within a recovery approach of service provision. Using a retrospective design involving file reviews and a 3-year follow-up period, the authors investigated the rate of successful/unsuccessful community reintegration (defined by the presence or absence of an absolute discharge/readmission to hospital) in female forensic psychiatric patients (N=48). The study evaluated the extent to which the risk and protective factors captured in the Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability (START) predicted a range of positive and negative outcomes in the study sample. Results showed that 47.9% of the women qualified as having successfully reintegrated into the community, with the remaining 52.1% qualifying as still being in recovery. Successful individuals possessed significantly more protective factors and significantly fewer risk factors than individuals still in recovery. Furthermore, both the vulnerability and the strength scale of the START demonstrated good predictive validity, however we did not find evidence of incremental validity of the strength scale. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Evaluating research on recidivism rates, it is apparent that approximately 52% of the general offender population, between 31% and 85% of mentally ill offenders, and as many as 70–87% of forensic patients do not reoffend within two to five years after release (Bonta, Law, & Hanson, 1998; Douglas, Ogloff, & Hart, 2003; Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 2002; Peersen, Sigurdsson, Gudjonsson, & Gretarsson, 2004; Poporino & Motiuk, 1995). Factors such as previous offending behavior and criminal justice involvement are well recognized as strong predictors of future offending. By definition, then, forensic patients and other individuals with a history of coming into conflict with the law are already at an elevated risk for offending and violence than individuals without a criminal history. Yet even within such high-risk populations, many at-risk