Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:728-732
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Effects of diagnosis and context on dangerousness
RL Binder and DE McNiel
Department of Psychiatry, University of California, San Francisco.
The authors extensively reviewed the medical records of 253 patients
hospitalized on a locked, university-based psychiatric unit. They found
that schizophrenic and manic patients were more likely than patients with
other diagnoses to be assaultive before admission. In the hospital,
however, manic patients were the most likely to be assaultive. The results
of this study show that the risk of violence among different diagnostic
groups of patients varies according to context and is moderated by
situational variables. These findings have implications for the assessment
of dangerousness before and during hospitalization.
