Psychiatry - August 2008 - (Page 39)

TABLE 3. Tips for mental health professionals who may become the target of a stalker Guard personal information carefully Be aware of patients’ boundary violations, such as the following: • Requests for personal information • Unusual phone calls or messages • Frequent and inappropriate gifts • Contact outside of work setting Record all unusual activity Report unusual activity to supervisors Consult with specialists Alert one’s family to the threat Consider a restraining order against the perpetrator consultation with forensic specialists, the police, or lawyers may be necessary. It may also be necessary to alert one’s own family to the threat, given that their safety may be in jeopardy. A restraining order may be another alternative, though they are not always effective. THE RESEARCH ON FEMALE STALKERS International survey study. Meloy and Boyd19 collected data on 82 adult women who had engaged in stalking behavior via a survey sent to mental health and law enforcement professionals in the United States, Canada, and Australia. Though this study has some limitations, including a dependence on the observations of a variety of clinicians who were not using a standardized instrument to evaluate the female subjects, it assesses one of the large groups of female stalkers found in the literature. Typically, the perpetrators were Caucasian, heterosexual, single women with a mean age of 35 (ranging from 18–58 years old). Often, these women did not have children. They appeared to be educated, with a large majority having graduated from high school 39 and a solid minority having achieved a college or graduate degree. Their intelligence may have allowed them to be more successful in pursuing their victims. Reports of substance abuse were not common, but about one-third of women used substances while stalking. Available data suggested the presence of Axis I and II disorders. Twenty percent of those with Axis I disorders were diagnosed with delusional disorder. The most common Axis II diagnosis was borderline personality disorder (n=10 of 22). Antisocial personality disorder was not diagnosed in any of the women. Despite incomplete data, there appeared to be a high rate of sexual (n=18 of 40) and physical (n=12 of 40) abuse in the personal histories of the female stalkers, which may have predisposed these women to the development of borderline personality characteristics or posttraumatic stress disorder. A great majority of the victims of female stalkers were known to them, either as acquaintances, former lovers, or family members. However, one-fifth of the victims were completely unknown to their stalkers. Frequent reasons for stalking included anger, obsession, feelings of abandonment, loneliness, and dependency. Usual stalking behaviors included telephone calls and messages, giving letters and gifts, driving by the victim’s location, trespassing, and following the victim. More than half of the women threatened their victims, and a quarter were physically violent, with three victims losing their lives to their stalkers. Most episodes of violence, however, did not involve the use of a weapon and did not result in injuries. Violence was more likely if the stalker and the victim had been previously sexually intimate. In more than half of the cases, the behavior increased in frequency and intensity. The victims were usually Caucasian, heterosexual males with a mean age of 41 (ranging from 16–68 years). Female victims were targeted one third of the time. The perpetrators pursued their victims for an average of 22 months. Australian forensic clinic study. In 2001, Purcell, et al.,20 published a study that compared female stalkers (n=40) to their male counterparts (n=150). The data was collected based on referrals to a community forensic mental health clinic that specializes in the assessment of stalkers. One of the limitations of this study is that it involved a retrospective analysis of data collected from evaluations performed over a period of eight years. Similar to the men, the women, on average, were 35 years old, single, and employed. Women were less likely to have a history of criminal behavior. Almost half of the women (n=18 of 40) had an Axis I diagnosis, most commonly (10 of 18) delusional disorder. Half (n=20 of 40) were diagnosed with an Axis II disorder, including borderline, dependent, and narcissistic personality disorders. The diagnostic profiles of these women did not differ from their male counterparts, except women had lower rates of substance use. With only two exceptions, female stalkers knew their victims. Forty percent of the victims were professional contacts, frequently mental health professionals. Men were comparatively more likely to pursue strangers. Same gender stalking was more frequent among women than men. Based on Mullen’s typology,8 women’s primary motive for stalking behavior in almost half of the cases was to seek intimacy. In the female group, there were no cases of sexually motivated predatory stalking, which differed from the male stalkers. Women and men appeared to stalk their victims for a similar duration of time. Women were more likely to harass their victims via telephone call but less likely to physically pursue them when compared to men. Strikingly, women had the same propensity to make threats and become violent, including property damage and assault, as the male stalkers. [AUGUST] Psychiatry 2008 39

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Psychiatry - August 2008 Editor’s Message Editorial Advisory Board Contents Borderline Personality Disorder: Are Proliferative Symptoms Characteristic? Short-acting versus Long-acting Medications for the Treatment of ADHD Baby Stimuli and the Parent Brain: Functional Neuroimaging of the Neural Substrates of Parent-Infant Attachment These Boots Are Made for Stalking: Characteristics of Female Stalkers Managing Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in the Emergency Department Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Hypoxia, and Metabolic Syndrome in Psychiatric and Nonpsychiatric Settings Improving the Quality of Life in Patients with Alzheimer’s Disease The Process of Getting New Drugs to Market Journal Watch Classified Advertising Information for Authors

Psychiatry - August 2008

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