Psychodynamic Research

Introduction Recently it has become more evident that people with lower intelligence may have a higher risk of developing a mental illness. Research has shown that children and adolescents who score lower on psychometric tests of intelligence are at a greater risk of having contact with psychiatric services and being admitted to the hospital for psychiatric care (Gale, Hatch, Batty & Deary, 2009). Several different psychiatric diagnoses have been looked at in this context, such as schizophrenia (Gunnell, Harrison, Rasmussen, Fouskakis, &Tynelius, 2002), depression, bipolar disorder and other non-affective psychoses (Zammit, et al., 2004). Cognitive epidemiology research has looked at childhood IQ as predictors for health later in life,

A majority of research is contradictory when it comes to high intelligence in psychopathy. Some research argues that higher intelligence is correlated with more offending, while others argue that a higher IQ in psychopathy means that they can live a successful life in the community. A majority of the research in this area has only looked at IQ scores in children and adults as it is related to offending and psychopathy, but has not looked specifically at how childhood IQ is associated with psychopathy in adults. This research will aim to fill in gaps about how childhood intelligence associates with being a non-offending

The PCL-SV is a 12-item version of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). Each of the items are scored on a 3-point scale, where total scores can range from 0 to 24 (Hare & Neumann, 2006). This version of the PCL-R was chosen because the PCL-SV can be used as a screen for psychopathy as a stand-alone measure in non-criminal populations (Hare & Neumann, 2006). Using the early data that was collected on IQ from the LBC1936, will allow the comparison of the participants’ childhood IQ and their results on the PCL-SV, in order to determine if there is any relationship between the two