[Psychiatric emergencies: guidelines for the treatment of agitation]

Psychomotor agitation represents a common phenomenon in emergency psychiatry settings. The awareness of its clinical manifestations and the early management can permit the control over a potentially dangerous behavior that could otherwise convert itself into a violent one. Health professionals should be able to adopt de-escalation strategies, structured to achieve the stabilization of patients' aggressiveness and motor agitation. When abnormal behaviors persist clinicians should be competent in the adoption of the most adequate psychopharmacological treatment for patient de-escalation. In this work we analyze psychomotor agitation treatment guide-lines.