Am J Psychiatry 1978; 135:198-201
Copyright © 1978 by American Psychiatric Association
Prediction research and the emergency commitment of dangerous mentally ill persons: a reconsideration
J Monahan
The author suggests that research on the prediction of violent behavior
does not support the unqualified conclusion that the accurate predictions
of violence is impossible under all circumstances or that psychiatrists,
psychologists, and others will invariably overpredict its occurrence by
several orders of magnitude. Further, he suggests that there are
theoretical reasons why one could expect that one set of
circumstances--those which typically apply in the short-term emergency
commitment of mentally ill persons predicted to be imminently violent-- may
be exempt from the systematic inaccuracy found in the current research.
