Psychosocial Risk Factors for Violent Behavior

Formation of Psychopathological Behavior

The genesis of psychopathology must be recognized as a dynamic process, combining a variety of interactive factors that are not only diverse in their course but also miscellaneous as far as the particular resulting deviance is concerned.

When focusing on the psychosocial factors of importance in the formation of violent behavioral patterns and the development of deviant personality structures, research has repeatedly demonstrated that they predominantly seem to be connected to dysfunctional family systems. In addition to overly strict, authoritative, and punitive parenting, the social environment can be considered as another influential aspect. Consistent attachments to caregivers outside the family, mediating the effects of the negative relationship with the biological parents, can help give children from highly dysfunctional backgrounds the opportunity to develop along social norms. When dysfunctional family systems are joined with unstable social structures, not offering enough support during the upbringing but instead interfering with the internalizing of coping strategies, the genesis of violent behavior seems most likely.

To comprehend the complexity of these dynamics, the individual's disposition (and eventual attachment deficits), the family background (and its level of disorganization or the existence of inadequate role models), environmental influences, and concrete traumatizing life events must be recognized as interdependent factors. The progression into psychopathology unites the totality of psychosocial, biological, and sociocultural factors, but deviant behavioral patterns, such as repetitive violence, appear to mainly be the result of inadequate social and familial interactions (apart from the existence of a general predisposition). As a release mechanism for deviant behavioral patterns, the socialization through environmental influences seems to outweigh the impact of parental education and child-rearing practices. For the maintenance of the psychopathology, the opposite appears to be the case.

The formation of psychopathological behavior can be understood as an interdependent process that combines a genetically predisposed action probability and disadvantageous, unfavorable developmental conditions supplementary to the experience of traumatizing events and conflicts. Within this working diagram, the psychosocial factors take on a special position.

Psychopathological behavior and deviant personality structures, as individual patterns of maladjustment developing in the process of adapting to life's challenges, often result from conflicts arising from the attempts to master adjustment difficulties appearing throughout the course of life. Symptoms should be considered signals pointing at an existing conflict and requiring interpretation. Instead of considering the symptoms a failure of adaption to life, they must be viewed as an adaption on another (deviant) level, depending on the cognitive and affective maturity of individuals, in addition to the individual's inner representations.

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