Psychomotor Therapy as an Additive Intervention for Violent Forensic Psychiatric Inpatients: A Pilot Study

Almar J. Zwets*, Ruud H. J. Hornsveld, Peter Muris, Thijs Kanters, Egbert Langstraat, Hjalmar J. C. van Marle

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

The first results of psychomotor therapy (PMT) as an additional component to Aggression Replacement Training (ART) were explored in a group of forensic psychiatric inpatients (N = 37). Patients were divided into two groups: ART+PMT (experimental group) and ART+Sports (control group). Primary outcome measures of aggression, anger, and social behavior, and secondary outcome measures of coping behavior and bodily awareness during anger were administered on three occasions: pretreatment, posttreatment (after 35 sessions), and follow-up (15 weeks after the final session). The combined group (experimental and control group) showed clinically significant improvements on observed social behavior, observed aggressive behavior, and self-reported anger, but there were no differences in treatment effects between the experimental group and the control group on these primary outcome measures. However, on secondary outcome measures of bodily awareness during anger and coping behavior, the experimental group displayed somewhat more improvement than the control group. Altogether, the results of this pilot study indicate that the addition of PMT to a treatment program for violent forensic inpatients may indeed result in improvements on specific treatment goals of PMT, whereas its effects on aggressive behavior needs further examination.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)222-234
JournalInternational Journal of Forensic Mental Health
Volume15
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Keywords

  • Psychomotor therapy
  • aggressive behavior
  • treatment outcome
  • psychopathy

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