Introduction: Psychotherapy is a form of treatment intervention targeting problematical human behaviour, emotion, and cognition using various psychological techniques and approaches. In Malaysia, the application of psychotherapy in ameliorating criminality among forensic populations is developing and evidence shows that some therapies like Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and Reality Therapy have been practiced in many correctional institutions.
Objective: This paper aims to review the role of psychotherapy for help in correctional settings as a means to ameliorate criminal behaviour and reduce recidivism rates.
Method: An archival research was utilised, where articles and books regardless of the year of publication from different countries, including Malaysia were examined. Several keywords were used for the purpose of retrieval of related articles.
Results and Discussion: Three different approaches of psychotherapies, i.e. Behavioural Therapy, Cognitive Therapy and Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and their principles and effectiveness in rehabilitating the forensic populations were elaborated in this review. The principle behind the effectiveness of the psychotherapy was different, and this influences the choice of treatment that should be used in dealing with the forensic populations.
Conclusion: Forensic populations have rights to obtain treatment, and the choice of therapy has to be relevant within the context of cost-effectiveness to ensure optimum effectiveness in ameliorating criminal tendencies.
The purpose of this study is to identify the effectiveness of integrative therapy treatment towards
depression and aggression among prison inmates. Integrative therapy in this study refers to treatment
module which are consisted of four integrated theories in a counselling process. It involved the
combined therapy of Person Client Centred (PCC), Rational Emotions Behaviour Therapy (REBT)
and Choice Theory Reality Therapy (CTRT) as technical treatment. Meanwhile, Stimulus Organism
Response (SOR) act as educational principle or training. Integrative therapy is conducted on the
respondents for six session of group counselling. This study is a quasi-experiment involving 160 depressed prison inmates (80 treatment; 80 control) and 140 aggressive inmates (70 treatment; 70
control) from five prison institutions as the respondent for this study using purposive sampling.
Inmates are identified as respondents using high cutting point of depression using Beck Depression
Inventory (BDI) and high aggression using Aggressive Questionnaires (AQ). For the data analysis, nonparametric
test such as Mann-Whitney Test and Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test were used based on the
normality test using Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-Wilk test. Result from the Mann-Whitney Test
shows that the treatment group had higher declining rate as compared to the controlled group for
depression and aggression. Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test also shows the same result as the treatment
group indicates a decline in rate from the pre and post of the treatment compared to the controlled
group. The results of this study are hope to act as the medium for using integrative model which is
rarely use in studies in this country especially in the field of treatment for prison inmates. It is also
expected that it can be applied in different setting which offer treatment service such as hospitals,
social work institution, police institute, schools, higher learning institutions and others.