Underreporting of physical assaults in schizophrenic inpatients

The authors followed prospectively a group of 79 newly admitted male schizophrenics for 6 months or until discharged, whichever came first, and monitored their assaultive behavior by review of their charts and the ward journals. Assaults were detected reliably by this method. When the assaultive behavior monitored in this way was contrasted with officially reported assaultiveness, 50% more assaults and 34.5% more patients who had one or more instances of assaultive behavior during the study period were detected. There were no differences in the number of injuries detected by the two methods. The authors contend that a realistic estimate of the incidence of physical assaults in young male schizophrenic inpatients is no less than 1.5 times that reflected by official reports.