Coping with the aggressive patient: an alternative to punishment

Extremely aggressive patients in mental institutions constitute a threat to staff and other patients that usually necessitates the use of physical restraints. With chronically aggressive patients this cycle of behaviors is defeating for both the staff and the patient. In this case history the authors describe how positive and negative reinforcement and shaping were used to alter the previously unmanageable aggression of a 36-year-old male psychiatric patient.