Threats to the president revisited.

Ten prisoners charged with "threatening the President of the United States" were evaluated in an effort to seek out psychiatric and sociological factors involved in this offence. Comparisons were made with known presidential assassins. A history of abandonment as a child, single or divorced state, and a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia were prominent in both the study group and the group of know assassins. Additionally, the apparent psychological need behind both the threats and the actual assassinations appeared remarkably similar in both groups. The primary differentiating variable related to lethality was "opportunity and happenstance". It is proposed that those threatening the President by letter are at high risk for carrying out their threat if intervention does not take place.