[Violence in psychiatric inpatients]

To evaluate knowledges about violence acted by psychiatric in-patients.

We selected inherent articles classified as useful to our purpose encoded in PubMed in the last 5 years, not neglecting previous but equally valid for a more precise and complete reasoning EBM Literature.

Risk factors for violent acts are: previous acts history, male sex and young age, alcohol and drug abuse/dependence, lack of insight, anger management problems, impulsivity discontrol and ostility at admission. Most of the acts are classified as impulsive and so schizophrenic spectrum whether in presence of productive symptoms, personality disorders and manic episodes are the most involved psychiatric pathology. Clinical experience evaluating behaviour at risk as threatening or provoking acts towards patients or clinical staff and the identification of personal history features (in particular if detected at admission) should lead to the classification of patients into risk groups for acting violence during hospitalization.

Good clinical practice aimed at violent acts reduction and possible prevention into clinical environment couldn't leave aside a precise known risk factors identification and the observation and constant monitorization of patients behaviour predictive of a possible act.