Aggression Among Psychiatric Inpatients: The Relationship Between Time, Place, Victims, and Severity Ratings

The rate of aggressive acts perpetrated by psychiatric inpatients remains a pressing issue. To date, few studies have distinguished between incident severities.

The aims of the current study were to identify rates of inpatient aggression in an inpatient forensic psychiatric facility and describe the severity of the aggression reported for aggressive incidents.

All documented acts of aggression at a 1,500-bed forensic hospital between 2009 and 2013 provided data about the time, location, and victims of aggressive acts. In total, 52,109 unique incidents were analyzed.

The findings showed an increase in violence rates during meal, medication, and shift change times. Patients (n = 3,436, 62%) were victimized more often than staff members (n = 2,103, 38%). Fall and winter months showed more acts of aggression than summer and spring, but there were no mean differences between severity ratings by season. The results showed that the swing shift saw more severe aggressive incidents than the morning or overnight shifts, p = .001, and significantly more serious incidents occurred when there were staff members working over time, p = .050.

The current study reports some key findings about aggression rates with a very large sample and presents some valuable data regarding the severity of aggressive acts.