The authors investigated the relationship between community violence and
violence in the hospital for patients hospitalized through emergency civil
commitment. The medical charts of 238 patients involuntarily admitted to a
university-based acute inpatient unit were reviewed for evidence of
violence during the 2 weeks before commitment and the first 72 hours of
hospitalization. Patients who were violent in the community were more
likely to be violent in the hospital. A discriminant function analysis was
used to identify the combination of information concerning community
violence and patient background characteristics that most efficiently
predicted which patients were violent during emergency commitment.
Abstract Teaser