De Brito y colaboradores publican en Nature Reviews Disease Primers una amplia revisión que contempla aspectos neurobiológicos y de intervención con las personas que presentan este trastorno.
Stephane A.De Brito , Adell E.Forth, Arielle R.Baskin-Sommers, IntiA. Brazil, Eva R.Kimonis, Dustin Pardini, Paul J. Frick, Robert James R.Blair and Essi Viding.
Abstract.
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a constellation of affective, interpersonal, lifestyle and antisocial features whose antecedents can be identified in a subgroup of young people showing severe antisocial behaviour.
The prevalence of psychopathy in the general population is thought to be ~1%, but is up to 25% in prisoners. The aetiology of psychopathy is complex, with contributions of both genetic and environmental risk factors, and gene–environment interactions and correlations. Psychopathy is characterized by structural and functional brain abnormalities in cortical (such as the prefrontal and insular cortices) and subcortical (for example, the amygdala and striatum) regions leading to neurocognitive disruption in emotional responsiveness, reinforcement-based decision-making and attention. Although no effective treatment exists for adults with psychopathy, preliminary intervention studies targeting key neurocognitive disturbances have shown promising results.
Given that psychopathy is often comorbid with other psychiatric disorders and increases the risk of physical health problems, educational and employment failure, accidents and criminality, the identification of children and young people at risk for this personality disorder and preventative work are important. Indeed, interventions that target the antecedents of psychopathic features in childrem and adolescents have been found to be effective.
The long and controversial history of psychopathy within psychiatry and its portrayal in the media have contributed to misconceptualized views of the aetiology, assessment, treatment and definition of this disorder among parts of the scientific and clinical community and the general public1,2 (Supplementary Table 1). For exam ple, among laypeople, psychopathy is often synonymous with violence and serial killing, but not all psychopaths commit violent acts.
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