Risk factors for violent crime and repeat offending in severe mental illness

Dr Fazel is a psychiatrist investigating associations between severe mental illness and violent crime, and risk factors for adverse outcomes in psychiatric populations and prisoners. These studies are being undertaken in collaboration with the Karolinska Institutet and use high-quality Swedish national registers and genetically informed designs. In addition, research using English and Welsh prison data has clarified the extent of self-harm among prisoners and its relationship with suicide. Recently, Dr Fazel has been working to develop clinical prediction rules for high-risk groups in conjunction with the Medical Statistics Group at the University of Oxford. By applying epidemiological approaches to clinical uncertainties in psychiatry, Dr Fazel's aim is to gain insight into mechanisms for adverse outcomes and promising approaches to secondary prevention.