Avaliação de mulheres privadas de liberdade: personalidade e maternidade

Abstract

Research in prisons are still rare, especially those related to the female audience. In addition to other issues related to women s imprisonment, maternity experience of incarcerated women is a subject little studied, especially when combined with aspects of their mental health and personality. Thus, the present research was divided into two studies, the first of which aimed to investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and the removal of their children. In this study, the participants were 28 incarcerated women from three prisons in southern Brazil, close confinement and who were already mothers when they joined prison. We used a questionnaire prepared by the researcher and the Beck Depression Scale (BDI). We excluded from the sample women with psychotic disorders and psychopathy, assessed through the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID) and the Hare scale (PCL-R). As main results, the study found a correlation between depressive symptoms of the studied women, checked through Beck Depression Scale (BDI), and their feelings about the departure of their families, especially their children, reported through the questionnaire. These results are consistent with other researches on the same subject, reporting that women deprived of freedom are more likely to have mental health problems, especially those who are mothers. The second study aimed to investigate the correlation between two scales, PCL-R and IM-P. The sample of this study consisted of 30 incarcerated women from the same three prisons in close confinement. We did not account for the sample women who had psychotic disorders, who were assessed by the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID). In order to achieve the research purpose, we applied the Hare scale (PCL-R) to evaluate aspects of personality, including psychopathy, and Interpersonal Measure of Psychopathy (IM-P), which evaluates behaviors and interpersonal interactions. The results indicated a statistically significant correlation between PCL-R and IM-P, mainly as regards the factor 1 of PCL-R, corroborating the findings of other studies, and indicating that IM-P acts as an auxiliary measure to diagnose psychopathy, especially as regards the assessment of interpersonal behavior.