Efficacy of treatment approaches for stalking offenders: a systematic review

Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of treatments approaches in reducing the risk of reoffending in stalking perpetrators. Design: A systematic search was conducted on Medline/Pubmed, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and Scopus. Setting: The United States, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Italy. Participants: The analysis included 661 patients with stalking behaviour, 14 (2.1%) of whom were female. Treatments: The evaluated treatments encompassed Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT), Cognitive–Behavioral Anger Management Intervention, and the Duluth Model as comparison conditions. When pharmacotherapy was present, this, always associated with psychotherapy, was usually based on antipsychotics and mood stabilizers. Results: We identified 35 studies from 3141 studies and 10 were included in the systematic review. Psychotherapeutic approaches proved to be effective in reducing recidivism rate, independently from the psychological model employed. Conclusions: Psychological treatments seem to be effective in reducing stalking recidivism, despite further studies are warranted to better elucidate the most effective approaches to deal with this group of offenders, given the severe social repercussions associated with this phenomenon.